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No Connection, No Flush (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev
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[–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (14 children)

Ok maybe the flushing part is a bit overkill and mostly a joke, but a toilet that can deliver notifications like if it's clogged for example before you use it and make it worse would have fantastic utility IMO

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    This makes zero sense. If it's clogged, you'd know beforehand when you look in the bowl. Why the would anyone need a notification for that?

    The ONLY utility that I could see here is if the notification logged who did the clogging so you could give them shit.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Toilets can appear to have flushed fully, but still have...material...stuck in the U-bend that hasn't completely evacuated the toilet. A subsequent flush won't work, even though the water in the bowl is clean.

    Ask me how I know.

    That said, this could almost certainly be better-solved in other ways. Maybe by preventing the tank from refilling if there's still something in the u-bend (then you'd know it needed attention because there'd be no water in it)?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)
    1. We don't know that the toilet has this sensing capability.
    2. If it does, the actual fix is the same as if it were a regular toilet.

    This just isn't an issue that needs technology as a solution.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    125% agreed. I was responding only to "If it's clogged, you'd know beforehand when you look in the bowl." I think there's potentially an engineering solution--a fluid dynamics engineering solution--but definitely not an app.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    I guess, but I've never heard of a toilet clogging before it's used.

    There's other better examples, though. Smart thermostats get plenty of use from the people I know with them. A fridge that tracks how long stuff has been inside would be dope. Smart lights have uses.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Toilets can appear to have flushed fully, but still have...material...stuck in the U-bend that hasn't completely evacuated the toilet. A subsequent flush won't work, even though the water in the bowl is clean.

    Ask me how I know.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Well, I suppose it is the kind of system where a lot of weird non-deterministic things can happen.

    What kind of sensor are we thinking of here? Optical? I know it's a real issue to find something that doesn't foul or misread even in the simpler application of an RV septic tank.

    I wonder if you could just put a window in the U-bend for manual inspection. It's supposed to be full of "clean" water most of the time anyway.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, not to mention, adding any sort of electronic components to the thing would be dicey at best. A lot of bathrooms don't even have power outlets anywhere near the toilet.

    I'd prefer some sort of pressure-activated valve or something, but this is an engineering challenge that's beyond my meager skills.

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