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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

#501

Post by folmar »

caf wrote: post #123
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…

If "the operating noise" is the cooling fan for the magnetron, it keeps going when the time is up to cool it down. Mine does the same, but actually says "COOL" on the screen when it does so.

My old microwave oven has a fan that is on only when the microwaves are on. If that was possible in 1985 it can be made the same way now.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#502

Post by teej »

linsomniac wrote: post #373

Or, just make devices not so power hungry. I got this fancy tire gauge+filler. It uses a couple coin batteries. They live around 6 months with it "off". I use it a couple times a year, so basically every time I go to use it it is dead. Removing the batteries requires disassembly. A year or so ago I soldered in a couple AA batteries in place of the coin batteries, it's been good so far, but I'm waiting to see. On the…

User control has a big benefit here. I want certain devices to sacrifice battery power in exchange for fast wireless re-connections over bluetooth. My headphones for example - I don't want to wait, use the bluetooth antenna all you want.

But I don't want that 100% of the time. With a power switch, I get my ideal user experience (fast reconnects) and I have control when to apply that user experience (on/off switch).

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#503

Post by karussell »

Beltalowda wrote: post #166
teekert wrote: post #10

…And, one should be able to turn of every led even when powered on… At Ikea I almost bought a nice brushed steel extractor hood, except it had this obnoxiously bright blue led on the front. Why? I know when that thing is on without it drawing my attention constantly. Same with my Lenovo X13 gen 2, there is a bright white led next to the power button… just why…???

I don't know about the X13, but a lot of ThinkPads you can control the LEDs with some settings; /sys/class/leds/tpacpi::power/brightness on Linux (also some other knobs/LEDs in there). Thus far this has worked on every ThinkPad I've had; but again, I don't know if it will work on your X13 (or how to do it from Windows or other systems), but something to look at if you haven't already.

It would be great to disable it as it is really annoying but it does not seem to work. The file is readonly and it isn't recommended to change this: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/rnvgyc/how_to_di...

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#504

Post by folmar »

mmoskal wrote: post #401
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you developed anything with that microcontroller, or tried to use that datasheet? An ATTiny10 or PIC16F is so much better documented, so much better supported, so much more featureful, and so much better in every way that the average small-volume product design house will never make up the 40-cent price difference per part. How many development hours or support hours can you bill before you're penny-wise and pou…

Because the chips are so simple, I actually found the datasheets for Padauks to be sufficient. In particular, I don't think it's any more confusing than say STM32 or even NRF52 datasheets, mostly because the chips are so much easier and thus the datasheets are sooooo much shorter. Granted, I have not worked with 8-bit MCUs other than Padauks. Their compiler/macro-assembler also seems to be working just fine, once you…

There is an SDCC backend as well.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#506

Post by diegof79 »

Example in front of me: the MacBook Pro.

At some point when Apple introduced the touchbar someone decided that you don’t need to truly turn it off… and it automatically turns on when you press a key. Meaning that you can’t cleanup the keyboard without draining the battery first. (I tried looking for undocumented configs to turn this off… for years -well more or less since 2017)

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#507

Post by zerocrates »

titzer wrote: post #441
sandworm101 wrote: post #423

Cars. Cars are ubiquitous. They are everywhere. We all relate to them without thinking. Cars run on batteries. Even IC runs various systems using battery power when parked. But do cars have an off switch? To turn them truly off, such as when storing for a long period, the procedure is take a wrench and physically disconnect the 12v battery. So I disagree with the author. At least some battery-powered products are doi…

My car's entertainment system is stuck in a crash loop 24/7. It is slowly draining the battery, to the point where I worry my car won't start if it has been off for more than a week or two. And I don't agree that "consumers have spoken". Consumers don't design cars; their feedback loop is long, lossy, and easily ignored. Profitability drives car design, not what consumers want.

I have a Ford that sometimes has a similar problem: a freeze/crash in the entertainment system makes it partially unresponsive (so it can be stuck playing whatever it was playing at whatever volume it was at) and it will just eat the battery in no time. The solution is to pull the fuse to restart the thing.

There's a big Microsoft logo badge right on the center console letting me know who to thank for that.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#508

Post by priteau »

diegof79 wrote: post #506

Example in front of me: the MacBook Pro. At some point when Apple introduced the touchbar someone decided that you don’t need to truly turn it off… and it automatically turns on when you press a key. Meaning that you can’t cleanup the keyboard without draining the battery first. (I tried looking for undocumented configs to turn this off… for years -well more or less since 2017)

There are utilities to help with this problem: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/06/04/keyboardcleanto...

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#509

Post by rocqua »

marcosdumay wrote: post #404
rocqua wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that actually work for 5G? I believe that, in urban areas, you can even get cell reception from inside a microwave because a phone needs very little signal.

> because a phone needs very little signal Isn't it because the microwave is shielded against a very specific frequency, that is much lower than the 5G one? So that the 5G frequency penetrates the shielding without much trouble? (I'm really not sure, that's my initial guess, but the questions are not rhetorical.)

Microwaves are at 2.4Ghz. Normal 5G ranges from 800Mhz till about 5Ghz. That is about the same ballpark, and Faraday cages are not incredibly frequency sensitive devices.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#510

Post by swader999 »

cute_boi wrote: post #408
swader999 wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can still get cell reception in my bedroom that has three coats of the paint with proper copper grounding running through it all. But it barely registers on my meter now whereas before it was 100x. I'm sensitive to emf and do sleep noticeably better now. I still turn my phone and wifi off at night. I'm about 400 metres from a cell tower. Rural so no 5g yet I think. Yeah I have the window film and metal window scree…

Can you explicate more about emf sensitivity! Just asking because I have never heard such thing. And, yea caging entire house is probably arduous and costs fortune.

Its just anecdotal, I definitely sleep better the further I'm away from cell phones, cell towers and pulsed wifi routers. I've got a meter and I've used emf shielding clothes prior to addressing my bedroom. Its pretty hard to do decent studies on it since its so prevalent. Prone to quackery and people making quick bucks on it too.
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