this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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I mean, you could just use smarter stuff that's open source and has local API, or do what I do and build your own devices where you can ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Even there though, what is the actual point of a phone app controlled smart toilet, even if you open sourced the whole thing? Unlocking one's phone and tapping the app icon, and then presumably a button on the app, is going to take more time than one press of a lever that one is right next to anyway, and the latter doesn't present as many points of failure.
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
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.
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)?
A little display or indicator light somewhere on the toilet itself would be better than connecting it to some IOT app
This just isn't an issue that needs technology as a solution.
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.
How do you know?
One word.
Toddlers
But in this scenario don’t the toddlers need phones? Wait do toddlers all have phones now?