Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everything with a battery should have an off switch

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 613 posts

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#541

Post by saltcured »

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.

I've had the opposite problem. I was reading a lithium battery package many times, frustrated that I could not find the expiration date. I finally realized that "2032" was printed as a year and was not an alternate size code.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#542

Post by balsam »

ceejayoz wrote: post #140
balsam wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the table in the following Article, lithium batts have the lowest self discharge rate. When you dont have credentials to present please present citations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-discharge

Degrading outside a voltage range and soldered batteries means they’re talking about the lithium ion or lipo parts of this chart. I’ve seen several “present credentials” demands here lately. I find it a bit odd.

Well, thats because I am a theorist who lately had to look at industry technical engineering websites about matters that academics dont care about and I find them to be mostly hearsay and heuristic garbage. I need to know whether your “credentialed” experiences can be written off.

Citation: search for the terms “self-discharge”. I dare you to find something less kosher than the wikipedia page. I already find the wiki page less than kosher.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#543

Post by convolvatron »

mlatu wrote: post #204
benhurmarcel wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also calipers with a dial. https://www.otelo.fr/waroot/images/products/600/40130350_A.g...

it doesnt even have to be a mitutoyo to get you down to 0.01mm precision, i got mine for about 40euros. Using equipment i had access to at work i checked that rating and indeed: the tool i got is good for measuring at that scale, and you really dont need any electronics. Usually you can pay the vendor to calibrate the tool for a couple bucks more. of course digital ones are much, much easier to read, but you only rea…

I keep a bunch of the US $16 stainless dial calipers lying around so I don't feel bad when I drop them or use them as a scribe. the mitutoyos only come out when its important - getting dimensions to make a copy, or the last pass on a part that really cares about it.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#544

Post by chuchana »

atoav wrote: post #314
jsjohnst wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having an off switch on a life saving device like that sounds like a profoundly bad idea to me, so not sure why it would be brought up in this context. I personally would’ve used an example of something you might actually want to turn off, but it would just be a bad idea, not a potentially fatal idea, if you failed to turn back on.

I was listing things where I would not want an off-switch along with the reasons. As you rightly mentioned yourself having an off-switch on a smoke detector is a very bad idea. The only place where smoke detectors are frequently switched off are remote huts that might be empty for the better part of a year. And there the best strategy is to unmount the whole thing, pull the battery out and place both things somewhere…

> having an off-switch on a smoke detector is a very bad idea

Not at all! You might reconsider your opinion when one of these things goes off at night for no reason and you find out its battery isn't removable.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#545

Post by IIsi50MHz »

throw10920 wrote: post #340
ggm wrote: post #31

Earlier 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.

> I think this is special pleading. This is an emotional, low-quality response to what is a measured comment actually providing nuance to the discussion. The parent poster is very clearly not saying that leaving off the power switch leads to a better experience for the consumer - they're just giving legit reasons that a design/marketing team might use to justify doing so. Please don't try to cheapen the knowledge tha…

I took it as "I think the reasons given are not legitimate, and are poor excuses for 'maldesign'.".

Where 'maldesign' is my dad's favourite word for every seeming design flaw or 'unreasonable' limitation. (-:

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#546

Post by tempestn »

WalterBright wrote: post #537
tempestn wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you find it annoying losing all the settings in your car? Radio stations, etc.? If you're leaving your car for a long time without driving it, I would suggest adding a pigtail to make it easy to plug in a battery tender instead.

Not really. I lose the presets, but I play music from a USB stick anyway. It's far, far less trouble than coming back from a trip and finding your car dead in the airport parking lot. Many times I've also discovered a dead battery in the morning because the door wasn't closed all the way and the interior light was on. Ugh. Having a separate "tender battery" for car-is-off power needs is a fine idea. Another idea is f…

They're not cheap, but Antigravity batteries (1) implement that. It monitors battery voltage and disconnects when it reaches a given level. To start the car you just press a button on a fob to internally connect to the reserve, and off you go. Doubly useful for Lithium batteries since they really don't like being over-discharged.

1: https://antigravitybatteries.com/

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#547

Post by antifa »

npteljes wrote: post #226

My most ridiculous experience was when an MP3 player froze back in the day. We had no way to switch off, or pull the battery out, so we waited 2 weeks, until the battery was dead. Then it worked fine after a recharge.

Every mp3 player I owned had a removable battery.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#548

Post by antifa »

Nav_Panel wrote: post #378
pveierland wrote: post #67

Related 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 p…

Great part about TVs is you can just... unplug them.

Then everytime you want to watch something, your "smart" TV will make you wait for it to check and download new updates (mostly advertisements).

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#549

Post by kazinator »

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…

I bought a Yamaha FX-500 processor in 1989. 29 years later, I did a mod to convert it to a batteryless NVRAM chip. The original button cell battery was still good; settings I last touched in 1990 were still being held.

Garage door openers can last 10-15 years too; those use the battery to transmit a signal, not just to hold a piece of SRAM alive.

The bathroom scale is just a poor electronic design.

Re: Everything with a battery should have an off switch

#550

Post by dpark »

RHSeeger wrote: post #540
dpark wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dial thing is... infuriating. It never once found a situation where it made using the device better, and in most situations it made it worse. Digital dials can be nice in some cases. My parents had an oven with a dial for the temperature. Spin it either way to increase or decrease the temperature by extra 5 degrees. I loved it. It was so much better than the touchpad design. The range of actual temperatures in…

For temperature, I can see it working... though I don't see how it would actually be _better_ than tapping in the number. For the microwave time, it was a horrible experience pretty much every time I interacted with the device. A keypad is simple, intuitive, and easy to use.

Keypads should be simple and easy to use, but they often are not. The buttons are inconsistently responsive and there’s always at least one other key you have to press, often two. And those other two are named whatever the designers decided and placed wherever the thought would be most confusing.

“Okay, I want to cook for 3 minutes.”

‘300’

”Ok, the numbers don’t work until I press something else. Hmmm”

‘Time Cook’ ‘400’

“Shit. I hit the 4. Where’s the cancel?

‘Cancel’ ‘Time Cook’ ‘300’

“Where’s the start?”

‘Start’

Post reply on HN