How have you customized your life -- electronically?

When was the last time you sat on a hot soldering iron, or the second anoode lead of a TV that was on? ;-)

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell
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hmm,

the IntiMist must be located within 3 feet of a 110VAC 60 cycle US style AC power receptacle. It uses a maximum of 465 watts.

Why 3 feet?

martin

Reply to
martin griffith

Perhaps because the designers figured the bathroom itself was also designed to accomodate it, and therefore there'll be an outlet immediately adjacent to the toilet, so a longer cord would just get in the way?

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

Electronically controlled appliances have had a long history of being zapped. Mechanical controls are more robust.

Reply to
krw

I only tried to catch a dropped soldering iron once.

Reply to
Richard Henry

I caught one that rolled of someone else's workbench once. I saw something rolling off the bench out of the corner of my eye, and caught it before I realized what it was. I burnt three fingers and the palm of my hand pretty bad. Luckily, I had some very thick military surplus "Solenoid Lubricant" which was a very thick silicon grease. I smeared it over the wounds within seconds, which prevented the burnt tissue from drying out. Two weeks later there was almost no sign of the burns.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

There are high efficiency washing machined which still use the old mechanical timers. Yes the timer can fail- but it is cheap and easy to replace. The washing efficiency comes from the mechanical design, more than the electronics. The most useful electronics involved are in the direct drive motor control and load sensing- of which the latter can be done with a manual switch. The electronics, except for control of direct drive motors doesn't make the washer more efficient. It makes more complexity possible (often where it isn't needed). For manufacturers, the electronic controls offer the PR advantage of 57 wash cycles, lots of lights, 20 spin speeds and 10 temperature settings at little cost over simpler machines but sellable at a premium price because of these (and typically not used).

Oh boy, it's dark, turn the car lights on: It's raining so the wipers should be going on- Oh boy, if the driver can't see that it is dark or it is raining- how did he get a license? Contrast this with computer control of engine and transmission which provides useful optimisation of performance.

Having said that, appropriate use of electronics does have advantages but "appropriate" is the key word. Does it mean more complexity just because it is possible? I hope not. Now An MtBF of 100 years for an electronic module in a washing machine -which is not the "one horse shay" of the poem, is, while possible, not realistic considering the useful life of the mechanical parts. It can be done-at what cost? Remember that repair of the electronics is simply the replacement of the old part by a new part rather- do you expect the repair technician to do actual fault analysis and repair of the faulty part? Throw away and replace is the philosophy and has been for many years (not only in electronics). Customer pays and will pay more for an electronic module than for a clock driving cams (which actually may cost more to make). (sorry was burnt on an electronic stove control which, in the middle of the night, ran a self check and then would beep because something failed (actually moisture fooling it -poor design)- $300 shot. Initially on warranty but later it wasn't. Now I have replaced the whole stove and won't buy a certain well known brand. Still electronic control but better design for the application)

A lot of devices use "electronic" as sales pitch hype -e.g. toasters. The fact that there may be no electronics involved doesn't matter.

K.I.S.S. is still and always be a valid approach. --

Don Kelly snipped-for-privacy@shawcross.ca remove the X to answer

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Reply to
Don Kelly
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In my poorer days I've been known to replace cam switch springs with appropriately trimmed safety pins... worked for two more years ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Reply to
Jim Thompson

Sure, but there's clearly a convenience factor involved in building a washer that can automatically balance itself.

I also imagine that you do some amount of automatic water level/wash time regulation based on simple electronics, but it seems to me that it should again become more reliable -- and potentially much more robust -- if you take some simple sensors and feed them to a microcontroller to chew on.

Another convenience example: In some non-U.S. countries, houses have multiple power hookups, where one's only active at night and is priced at a lower charge than the "regular" hookup. Most people have, e.g., their water heaters on it. For an electric dryer, it's trivial to build an electronic timer into a dryer so that it can also use that same hookup, whereas for a mechanical dryer you'd need something like a spring-wound timer that would set the delay before it started. I'd be quite surprised if the price or reliability of such a mechanical timer was better than that of an electronic version (you can literally use a $0.25 microcontroller and $0.25 LCD...).

I do agree that, in many cases, electronic control is used as a marketing tool to provide additional, largely superfluous, "bells and whistles" that allow manufacturers to obtain higher margins. This is no different than stainless steel or just colored enameled appliances also commanding a disproportionately larger price, the upcharge automobile manufacturers have for leather seats, etc.

There's a huge difference between what people know they "should" do and what they "really" do. Good engineering is giving people as few chances to screw up as possible, while not unduly limiting their choices.

I'm sure there are still plenty of crappy toasters out there, but I never met

*any* some 20+ years ago that would reliably toast multiple slices one right after another without allowing the toaster to cool inbetween sets. This isn't surprising since they were just thermal switches to pop-up the toast, of course. Today there are electronically-controlled toasters that can easily perform this feat.

Yes, but there's a very wide range of "simple" when you'll selling to a large market. Look at MP3 players: Part of Apple's success with the iPod is that it is *very* simple to use, but this also makes it nowhere near as customizable/tweakable as various non-Apple MP3 players. Many people (myself included) think of the iPod as a toy meant for grade schoolers -- yet clearly a very large portion of the market doesn't see it this way at all.

Heck, remember that Joerg sees no value in upgrading to HDTV or even DVDs. :-)

---Joel

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

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