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Everything with a battery should have an off switch

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Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#481

Post by roelschroeven »

RHSeeger wrote: post #206
thaumasiotes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've lost track of the number of times I've lamented "did anyone actually use this?" We have a combination oven and microwave (yes...) that seems to have been designed with the primary purpose of enraging the owner. The microwave can only be set in 15 second increments. But you can fine-tune it, in five-second increments, by spinning a dial. Except that you can't do that while the oven is on. The microwave makes a…

> by spinning a dial When we moved into our current house, it had a microwave like that. When we replaced it, my primary requirements were 1. multiple fan speeds, and 2. a nice, simple touch pad for entering the time; preferably one where you didn't need to press a button before starting to enter the cooking time. The dial thing is... infuriating. It never once found a situation where it made using the device better,…

My microwave oven uses a dial, and it works great. It uses increasing intervals between dial ticks (5 seconds for cooking times under 1 minute, 10 seconds for cooking times under 3 minutes or so, than 30 seconds, than 1 minute, than 5 minutes; I don't know the cut-of points by heart). The intervals are chosen in a way that they're precise where they need to be, and large where they don't need to be precise. It's really easy and fast to set the time you need.

It's a bit limited, in the sense that you can't set the time to e.g. 17:27. But who needs that?

When my old mechanical kitchen timer died on me, I bought a digital one with a dial, in the hope that it work the same way as the one on my microwave oven. Boy was I wrong. It kinda increases the interval when you spin it faster, but in a completely unpredictable and impractical way.

So I guess it's easy to make impractical dials, but it certainly is possible to make very well functioning dials as well.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#482

Post by wpearse »

progbits wrote: post #119
narag wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this ultracheap made-in-China big kitchen clock, with a single AA that I've replaced twice in eight years. I don't buy expensive batteries, more like in line with the clock. It has second hand (the kind that doesn't tick but appears to move uniformly) so there is some extra mechanical work.

I think the quality is hit and miss, even with premium batteries. I had enough devices damaged or entirely ruined by a leaked battery so now I remove them from anything not actively used. If anyone knows a reliable model for AA/AAA cells that will absolutely not leak when left unused in a device for year+ I would love to hear it.

We switched to buying USB-rechargeable AA/AAA lithium ion batteries. The brand we buy is Pale Blue, but there are many other brands.

These batteries have a regular form factor, with an added micro USB (and USB C on some larger battery sizes) port for recharging. They work really well for us and charge quickly (and conveniently — everything has a USB socket nowadays).

The price may seem expensive, but after 10 or so charge cycles they should have paid for themselves. I expect these batteries will be good for many hundreds of charge cycles.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#483

Post by spoonjim »

Nanite wrote: post #4

Examples lying around in my house: Bathroom scale: lovely it powers up when you tap it, but eats up 2 button cells a year for a few dozen uses a year Kitchen scales, bit more use, at least once a day but again 2 button cells a year electronic caliper: Same, eats up 1 button cell a year, just sitting in my toolbox Strangely enough none of our kids toys with batteries seem to suffer from this problem How much extra cos…

The kids toys are probably all manufactured by VTech which has solved this problem once across all of their products

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#484

Post by gibspaulding »

Arrath wrote: post #402
lobochrome wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Kitchen Scale: I recently bought this [1]. It works with friction - you turn the nob once or twice and you're good to go for a couple weigh ins. It feels rather cheap - so let's see if it really lasts. I love the idea though. I wish we had more energy harvesting gadgets like this. [1]; https://caso-design.de/en/p/caso-kitchen-energy-design-kitch...

When I was a child my parents had a purely mechanical scale, with a dial to adjust the zero. Yet another case of why fix what isn't broken. Only, I expect that an IC or two and an lcd to run a digital scale are cheaper at volume than some amount of mechanical clockwork, once the cost of batteries is pushed off on to the consumer.

A quick glance at Amazon seems to confirm your intuition. The cheapest mechanical scale I can find is $32 but there are lots of electronic ones for ~$15.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#485

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

WalterBright wrote: post #454
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Btw, here is the litany of broken systems that led to my outburst above. I'm two months (at least) without data on my phone. I didn't need to use it and I'm a lazy ass so I didn't try to fix it. When I call them, a kind youg man on the other end of the chat says he's reset my service and within a couple of hours I'll definitely have data. In a couple of hours I have no data, but now I also have no service: "emergency…

I could make and receive iphone calls, I could hear the other party, but nobody could hear me. This went on for a couple days, I was ready to go get a new phone. Then, silly me, I remembered the good old DOS days. I did a cold reboot of the phone, and voila! people could hear me.

What I don't get is that my phone doesn't have a windows OS. It has an Android OS. Like yours, it should not need a reset. Let alone three. So what's up with all those resets?

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#486

Post by icelancer »

donatj wrote: post #181
_Microft wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not to humblebrag or anything, but my favorite part of getting posted on hackernews or reddit is that EVERY SINGLE TIME there's one highly-ranked reply that's "jesus man, this could have been a blog post! why make 20 tweets when you can make one blog post?" > CAUSE I CAN'T MAKE A BLOG POST, GOD DAMN IT. I have ADHD. I have bad ADHD that is being treated, and the treatment is NOT WORKING TERRIBLY WELL. I cannot focu…

You can append to a blog post as you go the same way you can append to a Twitter feed. It's functionally the same, the medium just isn't a threaded hierarchy. There's no reason it has to be posted fully formed as he declares. My own blog posts often have 10+ revisions after I've posted them.

Or, more simply, you can just consume the product as produced, or not.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#487

Post by icelancer »

donatj wrote: post #171
Beltalowda wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fix" what? That the medium or style they choses to express themselves doesn't work well for you? Well, tough; that's your problem, not his. They're not your bitch. The entitlement...

> That the medium or style he choses to express himself doesn't work well for you It doesn't work well for thousands of people, which is why there are always complaints. You can say the exact same things about his post asking them to fix the controller. Oh "the entitlement" and "that's his problem, not the controller manufacturers". We're asking him to fix his posts. He's asking them to fix the controller. When somet…

Foone doesn't submit his threads here and he doesn't charge for them.

You're not an intended consumer.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#488

Post by trasz »

marcosdumay wrote: post #410
Loughla wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Measurements are funny things depending on the level of detail you need; analog versions of measurements are very clunky when you need precision. (now this is a bit much for bathroom scales and kitchen scales, but it was the calipers that interested me). When I need under .01 precision, my analog calipers just do not do the job as well as my electronic calipers. I can read them, but the last couple of tho…

Hum... Since I've brought a digital caliper that allowed reading sizes with actual 0.01mm precision instead of "guessing it's around X", I've noticed I have no object around that won't compress by something larger than that amount when I apply reasonable amounts of force into the caliper. I'm also sure it's not calibrated to this level, but that doesn't hurt relative measurements.

That’s why calipers ought to have those tiny “rolls” that you can turn to move them, instead of pushing, this way you can’t “overtension”.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#489

Post by whynotkeithberg »

Cd00d wrote: post #355
Buttons840 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both bathroom and kitchens scales are large enough they can run on AA / AAA batteries and casually go a decade (or more) without replacement. Tangentially: I used to have a 3 button timer, it was a little LCD countdown display and 3 buttons. One button set hours, one minutes, and one starts / stops the countdown timer. I found this timer when I was a kid, used, and the 1 AAA battery it had lasted into adulthood, lite…

Batteries are sold with an expiration date on the package, and I don't think that's usually decades out. In the 80s I remember seeing expiry dates on AA packs of 99, and my child-brain thought they didn't expire so they put a meaningless number there instead - I couldn't process the idea of the year 1999.

Sounds like nearly decades to me if buying in 80's and have an expiration of 99... Just because a childlike brain of hours can't understand that sort of time doesn't mean it's not literally decades.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#490

Post by canucker2016 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #159
Buttons840 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both bathroom and kitchens scales are large enough they can run on AA / AAA batteries and casually go a decade (or more) without replacement. Tangentially: I used to have a 3 button timer, it was a little LCD countdown display and 3 buttons. One button set hours, one minutes, and one starts / stops the countdown timer. I found this timer when I was a kid, used, and the 1 AAA battery it had lasted into adulthood, lite…

> Both bathroom and kitchens scales are large enough they can run on AA / AAA batteries and casually go a decade (or more) without replacement. For bathroom scales, sometimes the design doesn't permit batteries larger than button cells, since the entire scale is a piece of tempered glass with four 1/4" tall feet and a lighted LCD display that shines through the glass. I like this particular design because it's thin e…

My relatives have a similar type of bathroom scale.

When the button cell ran out, I popped in another one we had lying around.

One month later, the button cell was dead, after using the scale a handful of times. Obviously something was draining the button cell battery when the scale wasn't in use.

I could try and debug the scale, but given that even ten minutes of investigation would be more than the amount of time I spent using the scale in one year, I just decided to remove the button cell when the scale wasn't being used.

Two years later, that button cell still works in the scale...

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