Recently my trimmer turned on by itself and then stayed on. I couldn’t turn it off. Had to put it inside a bocal until it drained itself of battery so that we could bare the noise.
Everything with a battery should have an off switch
61–70 of 613 posts
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#62Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#63While I get the motivation, I'd rather have my Apple devices which have some economic value to be findable using Find My, which can't function with a physical "hard" off switch.
I'd rather have Bluetooth use infinitesimal amount of my iPhone/Macbook battery than them being lost/stolen which could be potentially tracked when off with "soft off".
But besides some use cases like this, I agree with the post.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#64ahahahah how ridiculous is this idea. Just want to see author having off buttons on all their remotes: TV, AC, ect. Enjoy manually turning them off and having redundant button=)
Many "classic" remotes are actually designed with the keypad itself being the power switch, they don't consume any power while not being used.
"Smart" remotes are a different picture. audibly sighs and walks off the stage
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#65Super bright LEDs is one of my biggest pet peeves on electronics. And 99% of them seem to be blue. This one is red, but pulsing - oh god.
For SMD leds it's pretty easy to destroy them directly by using a hot enough iron - they're heat sensitive and die easily. Just touch it with your iron and boom, annoying light gone.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#66Everything with a battery should have an easy way to remove the battery.
Correction: MUST have a way.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#67Related to the topic, besides the energy argument and the ability to cycle system state, I'd argue the huge importance of being able to power things off for personal freedom, especially for things with connectivity. We still have the power to shut off devices and largely the ability to block their connectivity (e.g. routing TV ads through a network filter).
With 5G and future connectivity, it feels as there will be push towards not being able to block the network access of individual devices, such that a TV or fridge will just speak to its server directly via some XG/IoT network which the user does control, without any user ability to block this communication.
After losing control over connectivity, it seems as power switches will be the next thing we'll start to lose control over, for engineering and ergonomic reasons, but also for control reasons. Such a shift may be further pushed by more ubiquitous and long-range wireless charging, if it gets to the point where devices such as our phones can be sufficiently charged simply by being inside buildings.
Just thought I'd throw in my $0.02 vote for the ability to power off things.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Between clicking on/off at least once a day, and changing batteries once a year, I'm picking changing the batteries. I'd also guess most people would just leave it on. They may have already tried that.
I wish the Dymo label printer (for those labels printed on tape) had an off switch. Every time I want to use it, the 6 batteries are flat.
Just remove one battery and it's off?
To be honest, I also have a Dymo label printer (very old model), and it does have a physical on/off switch, but even with the switch off it still consumes batteries like in 6 months.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is special pleading. At the volume we're discussing a surface mount flow solder on off device is not going to kill the BoM, and could be designed not to be ugly. It's no different to any other bad design. It could be better. All phones and computers can be completely powered down. They're hardly ugly switches.
Ermm, most phones and computers cannot be completely powered down. Either by nit-picking (CMOS clocks) or soft-switches (ACPI, soft button power-on), there's always some voltage in the system unless your PSU comes with an actual hard power switch (and even then, again, CMOS). They consume a lot less power, but leave an 'off' phone in a drawer for a month starting at 100%, it will not be 100% when you 'turn it on'.
I understand and agree, but the use-case is a bit skewed since that's not even true for a bare "naked" battery or cell.
They all self-discharge [1], some chemistries more than others of course but phone batteries certainly do.
Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch
#70People should show respect on not link to foone here.
If one doesn't want to get linked to on the internet, one shouldn't post things to the internet. It is as simple as that.