Off switch needs key to be turned back on
Last November Crave at CNet UK posted a list of their 10 favorite off switches. I'd like to outfit all the lights in my house with "emergency off switches" as shown here. You can turn something off by pushing the candy colored button, but you need the key to turn it back on. That way, my kids couldn't leave every damn light in the house burning, as is their wont. Link
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It seems to me that you have not thought this plan through completely. My kids would just leave every damn light in the house burning if they needed a key to turn them on...
If it's not already patented... coin operated light switch. My dad used to go on about how every light that gets turned off saves a nickel every. Illustrate by requiring regular deposits of 5 cents for continued illumination.
"[..] as is their wont."?
I'd like one of those key switches to be rigged to the outlets for the television, so then I wouldn't have to listen to my roommate watching tv all night long.
Yes Rajio it's english.
Scott Adams on the Dilbert Blog had a similar idea two weeks ago, called the Whole House Light Switch. It works like this:
"It’s located by the inner door to the garage. When you are heading toward the car with the rest of the family, and they have left on every light in every room in which they have entered in the past 24 hours, you just flip the one switch and all the lights in the house go dark. I suppose you could designate one light to be the exception, so it looks like you are home when you are away.
My other invention involves each family member wearing a ring with an RFID sensor, so the lights only stay on if at least one ring is in the room. As you enter the room, and pass near the sensor, the lights come on by themselves. The light switch would need three settings in this case: 1) On, 2) Off, and 3) Sensor. If you have house guests, they simply use the on/off part of the switch. When only the family is there, everything is on auto.
I considered an Allowance Meter, which decreases the kids’ allowances based on light use, but that would have unintended consequences."
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/02/better-light-sw.html
My other invention involves each family member wearing a ring with an RFID sensor...
And now that it's looking like RFID might be carcinogenic when implanted or in close contact?
#7, a bonus reduction of wanton consumption?
Note to Rajio: this post is also English.
"Either VeriChip and the makers of HomeAgain actually don't understand the difference between a benign fibroma and a malignant fibrosarcoma," noted Dr. Albrecht, "or they're deliberately lying to the public. Either way, it's clear they can't be trusted. We hope our new report will set the record straight."
lessons from Taser International?
I stayed at a hotel in Kyoto that had something similar to the Whole House Light Switch. When you entered the room, you had to put the door keycard in a special socket to turn on power to the room (everything except the refrigerator, which had its own on/off switch). At first I thought it controlled just the lights, but when my laptop didn't charge, I figured it out.
The emergency switch is designed to prevent either fiddling by operators (by using the emergency switch instead of properly powering down stuff), to prevent unauthorized use, or to make sure that management knows about all emergency shutdowns.
You can buy motion-sensing light switches at home-improvement stores. The light comes on when you enter the room and goes off again if there is no motion after a while.
does anyone know where you can actually buy one of these, or do you have to contact the company directly?
any electrical wholesaler. It's a very common device
Perfect for my daughter who loves the house lit up, but would also work on my husband!
Actually I would like a Whole House Light Switch that would leave the Christmas lights on.
Unstoppable: Here's one for $44 : http://www.newark.com/96F3667/electromechanical-industrial-control/product.us0?sku=IDEC-AXW401-R
For much more switch "pron", check out the McMaster-Carr catalog online:
http://www.mcmaster.com/
Electrical switches of all types from micro switches, tilt, contact, button, safety, and many, many more start at page 827.
Personally, I like the "push-to-stop, twist-to-reset" with indicator light style. A dual-circuit, 2.13-inch version is available for $41.41USD (page 840).
RFID being carcinogenic?
A very close friend of mine went for an EEG for some routine test around three weeks ago. The technician casually said to her, while looking at the oscilating pens scratching away on the continous feed paper,
"you hold your cell phone on your left ear don't you?
"How do you know?
"Oh your left side brain activity is slower than your right by a visible margin, everyone who comes in these days has a difference and its always which ear they hold the phone on.
I'm thinking of going back to a wired world with an answering machine that i check remotely from public call phones (except, now they're all cellular technology as well!).
Interesting... Might lose the key though.
So Mark, critical thinking time... the point here would be to make it harder to turn the lights on? wouldn't doing so make your kids, who I would assume are rational, more inclined to not turn them off?
It's a neat idea, in that it makes devices harder to toggle(I assume you can make it hard to turn stuff off too!), but how does this make anyone more likely to toggle it? (aside from new owners and 5 year olds) isn't this targeted at controlling devices you don't want turned off/on? it would be used to keep something on/off.
Unless I'm missing something stupendously obvious, which I do -ALL THE TIME-
Wait, wait, wait. You have children and you don't think that they would turn everything off and hide the key while shrilly giggling? And I bet that you would encourage them because you would giggle even more than them. You do have all CFs, don't you?
Wow, I completely missed #1 already pointing it out, I feel stupendously silly...
just randomly wire a few switches with hot toggles and change it up every few days. A dozen shocks or so and the little perishers will learn not to touch the lights
@#18: Language skills are known to be stronger in one side of the brain or the other (usually the left side, but not always, and rarely completely). It could be that people hold their phones on the side closer, nerve-wise, to their language center. I'm not sure if hearing signals cross to the other side of the brain like most other sensory signals (I *think* they do, but I can't find a decent diagram). If they do, then someone who listens with their left ear might have their language center in the right side of their brain -- and thus more activity on that side. (I'm almost certain that some people have dominant ears, just like they have dominant hands and eyes.)
I personally have trouble listening to the phone with my left ear, because it's harder to follow what's being said. Being right-handed, it would be much more convenient to listen with my left ear, but I find it really difficult. I've got some (unrelated) reason to believe that my language center is in my right brain (as it is for around 8-9% of women).
After a quick Google Image search for "talking on cell phone" I've "concluded" that the odds are roughly equal that an image of someone talking on a cell phone on a Google image search will be using their right or left ears. Some of those will be left-eared, some right-eared, some ambi-eared, and some posing for a picture. This startling evidence, combined with a sample of me and your friend, leads me to conclude that...
I'm sort of losing interest in this line of thought. What were we talking about again?
At our former apartment, I had every light on X10 low-cost home automation switches (high-quality Smarthome-brand, not the evil pop-under ad people), and by the front door, we had exactly what Scott Adams is talking about: the "All Off" switch. It really was very handy and one of the things I miss about our new place, which is enough bigger that it's going to need a more high-end (and therefore much, much more expensive) automation system.
@#10: They do the keycard-light thing in UK hotels, too, which I found out several years ago. After fifteen minutes of flipping every switch and pressing every button in all combinations and permutations, I finally admitted defeat and went down to the front desk. I said, "As you know, I'm an American tourist and very stupid. Can you explain to me how to operate the lights in my room?"
I thought that addressing the matter that way would save me from having a hotel clerk purr condescension at me in an accent so upper-crust it would make the Queen weep, but I was wrong. "Are you quite sure you'll be able to manage it, sir? Shall I send someone up to look after you?" This was at a £30-a-night Travelodge, mind you.
Since it wouldn't hurt ANY of us to get in a little more physical activity than we currently do, how 'bout a light switch with built in timer that beeps a couple minutes before it automatically shuts off.
When the switch beeps, get up off one's butt and reset it for another time period.
Different lights could have different preset times to fit with the activity usually taking place in that space. (Or just make 'em all one hour and figure that if you can't get off your butt once an hour, you don't need lights.)
THEN put a key switch in parallel with the timed switch to lock the light on if it is needed for an extended time for some reason.
I currently have a timer just like that, except for the "two minute warning" on my bathroom fan. It's a programmable digital switch. Should be a simple matter for a manufacturer to include a beeper...
well! why not just put a generator bike in each room then, if you are going to make a mockery of it.
I think that we can now merge this thread with the Wind Turbine thread and call it a day.
a Sponge Bob face somewhere....
CHASER WARNING CHASER WARNING! if you do not access to a unicorn,do not open
http://www.jonco48.com/blog/spongebob_20eyes.jpg
sorry; "have"
Good lord, there's nobody but you and me up on the board. We've finally bored them all to death.
yeah, I have that effect.
You guys have never heard of occupancy sensors? Much more effective. If you needed a key to turn the lights on, the kids would just never turn them off.
I can't believe they completely missed what's clearly the best switch of all:
the industrial machinery emergency stop switch
How could you say no to a 10cm-wide shiney red dome, that's expressly designed to be whacked in a hurry when you get your tie stuck in the woodchipper? They have a really satisfying "clunk" to them, too.
It is February here in the northern hemisphere. It's snowing. For the past several years, electric heat has been cheaper than gas. So there is no "waste" heat at my house - I leave the lights and computers on all winter.
You guys have never heard of occupancy sensors?
You mean the things that turn the lights out while you're taking a dump in a public restroom?
We have these suckers on our cardkey controlled doors, so they can be bypassed in an emergency. Hit the button to unlock the door. Of course when you do that an ear-splitting siren goes off and can't be silenced until the guy with the key is summoned to turn it off.
And, of course, these things are situated as close as possible to the light switch, so that when you grope around to turn the lights on you have the maximum chance of setting the sucker off......
@#11 And what happens if you sit down to read? There will be no motion after a while..but you still need the light :) Or did I get something wrong?
'coz we have this sensor-light in front of the house but it goes off way too early when no motion is detected. And I often find myself in dark when looking for the car keys for too long. (and, yes I do move then :))