Slashdot Mirror
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Electronic Toilet
BlueCup writes "The bathroom has been one of the few places people frequent where digital technology hasn't taken over. Most people use toilets more often than iPods, yet the humble American commode has remained as low tech as things get, essentially a combination of pipes, levers and flaps.
Computers are now invading the bathroom. For several years, manufacturers have been quietly pushing toilets and toilet seats costing $1,000 or more that use small, built-in computers and remote controls to add new features that warm, wash and dry you. As bathrooms become more upscale and luxurious, a digital toilet fits right in."
...which is on its way out in the USA, due to the Americans with Disabilities Act
Think like a programmer! You can always improve the interface to be more user friendly.
Seriously, where is the solid/liquid waste sanitizer that will be self-cleaning, self-disposing, etc.... I'd love to pay a little more on electric bill and get rid of my sewage costs and reduce my water needs... make it a recycling unit that outputs fertilizer for my yard even better (after blasting it with UV rays of course), maybe even mixing it in to a cistern of water that is used to feed my sprinklers with an herbicide pellet thrown in once a month to boot.
Where's my smart house that is smart about everyday things... forget the 'avatar' that tells me stock prices or whatever, just make it a more efficient house please.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Don't underestimate the importance of the restroom experience. How about this:
-a moistened TP dispencer (for when the 'roids start acting up) w/ antiseptic
-armrests and an executive leather ergonomic backrest
-a webcam with a UV spotlight to examine for traces of fecal matter (battle the 'klingons')
-a penile/scrotal 'cupholder' (hate when 'it' touches the cold porcelain)
-a control to adjust seat angle and elevation
-negative-pressure air exhaust for the toiletbowl (why do I have to smell it?)
-surround sound and dimmer lights (pooping in the dark could be a wild adventure (This Disney's Pirate Cave boatride!))
-neon pool lighting (aesthetically pleasing fishbowl; combine with dimmer lights et webcam)
-a timer/bestOf scoreboard!
-a shotgun rack and a Peltier beer cooler (hate the compressor fridge noise).
-stall doors that freaking go all the way to the floor!
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
- you can already get moistened TP dispensers. There's one problem with these - they're expensive. I'd rather see that more places (restaurants, etc.) start using the toilet seat cover dispensers as found in any airport (well, not Schiphol - where they want you to wet some toilet paper and scrub.. arguably better) and airplane
;)
:)
- armrests? aren't you supposed to hold part of your body, at least if you're male, to make sure you're not just going to flop all over the place with that thing? And what when you want to wipe your ass? Just for kicks, try making that motion while seater in your chair with armrests. And a leather backrest? Would that be built into the toilet lid? If so - how do you handle flushing with the lid closed? ( presuming you flush with the lid closed - unless you love the spray of course )
- klingons / dingleberries? if you miss one of those, you probably didn't wipe well enough - do you really need a webcam to see where you need to wipe some more? Scary. You're never going to get it 100% clean.. if you could, you wouldn't have a particular need change underwear every day. Fact is, you're going to leak more pee than you'll have to worry about with poo.
- penile/scrotal cupholder just sounds like an STD-spreading device. The solution to not having your penis or scrotum hit the porcelain is to get a decent bowl - sounds like the one you've dealt with/are dealing with is far too shallow. Either that or you're just very, very well-endowed; congratulations
- seat angle and elevation.. now this one I can get into, but mostly due to the fact that the elderly can't sit all the way down on typical toilet seats easily - so you can get taller ones for them. While at the same time, what parent hasn't had to hoist their kid up onto the toilet? Now if you could make it alter elevation, that would indeed be cool. It'd also be a bit more difficult to manage with regards to flushing-as-we-know-it, though
- you don't have to smell the toilet, typically.. unless you live in Europe and still have an older style bowl where your faecal matter just rests in a small puddle before getting flushed ('observation deck' bowls), you'll have one where all that stuff goes into a deep body of water where no odor can escape. Presumably you'd also have some manner of perfumed flush block thingy in there to keep whatever diluted smell of urine covered.
the remainder of the list is just getting silly.. why no HD TV? fold-out laptop with broadband internet? make the seat double as a massage chair and shoepolish station! Let's leave it at it being a restroom, please
That said, there have been advances even in recent decades as far as the toilet seat goes. e.g. from the 'observation deck' style to the deep bowl style, and from a regular gravity-does-it-all flush to a gravity+jet-flush, from one-flush-fits-all to the water conserving dual-flush-capacity tanks, etc. Maybe they're nowhere near as cool as an elevation-controllable toilet, but they're worthy progressions nevertheless.
But then again if you go travelling and end up in a foreign country where the mineral content of water is sufficiently different, then you'll end up with the squits and the Bidet seems like a much nicer invention all of a sudden.
I suffer from Crohn's Disease, along with approximately half a million other Americans. To summarize: Crohn's is an autoimmune disease of the digestive tract which causes inflammation in various places. When you have inflammation in your intestines, that part of the intestine cannot reabsorb liquid.
I don't have a bad case. But there are some horror stories out there: people who have to go 10-20 times a day, people who end up needing permanent ileostomies (a surgical bypass of the end of the intestines), etc.
Even with my relatively mild case, I have to take three Sitz Baths a day, two showers a day, and cleaning up after I go is not fun on top of that.
This toilet seat? Sounds like it would be fantastic for me and others like me. It could probably save me 20 minutes a day, at least. If my health insurance covered it, or I could afford the thing, I'd buy one tomorrow. Seriously.
And one in 350 people in America have this problem along with me. And the numbers are rising. (The disease was unheard of pre-20th Century -- not from lack of diagnostic methods, from lack of existing. There's a growth curve that is followed in developing countries; a Crohn's specialist I spoke to said that there are varioius studies underway to figure out what parts of our diet changed enough to create such an outbreak -- he hinted at processed sugar being a leading candidate. Unfortunately I lack a citation here, but the head of the Crohn's & Colitis center at Mass General seems like a pretty good source to me.)
I can see these things selling very, very well if they can bring the price point down just a tad, or convince health insurance to cover it for people in scenarios like mine (even partially).
So, yeah, I'm unhealthy -- but it's not my fault, and one of these things could make quite a difference.
In Medieval castles one had to "flush" by hand but the evacuation was built in by having the toilets either placed above a hole that was on the outer wall or by going to an inner chamber (typically still often renamed "oubliette" nowadays, even though there actually was no such thing). A septic tank really.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
I should have said brown recluse as these photos tell why.
A while back in Wired (I believe this was around '95-'97 or so) one of their standard features (Future Watch IIRC) consisted of brief blurbs from various relevant parties about technology that may or may not be available in the future and when (or if) they thought it would come to pass or become commonplace in the USA.
One of the blurbs from this was about when bidets (and since it was Wired they're probably hoping we'll assume this means computerized auto-bidets such as seen in various Japanese models) has stuck with me for a long time because of the essential rightness of the thought behind it, essentially the quote was: "I've never understood how Americans will fastidiously wash their hands after going to the bathroom, yet are content to merely use a handful of wadded paper on their bottoms."
Why indeed? From a rational point of view is it not the clean, hygenic, and proper thing to do? No more crude "wiping" for me. I want my ass washed, dried, and factory-fresh when I get up from my comfortable, lightly-padded seat.
Eliminating is already unpleasant enough, why continue to make it worse than needs to be?
But what is it really? It's a luxury item. Granted perhaps one with limited appeal, but it is certainly no less ridiculous than a lot of other luxury items popular today. Need some examples?
A $3000, 50" flat screen TV. A $200 CRT will let you watch TV too. Hell, a TV in general is a luxury item.
Any car costing over $15,000. If you live in a city, any car at all
Cell Phones. Period.
That list is endless, really. It's all about who it appeals too. TBH, the idea that my toilet will one day wash my ass, blow dry it, and then analyze my piss and tell me that I had better see a proctologist because I have some cancer brewing, all sounds pretty good to me.
There is definitely something in that. I was talking to a woman friend a few years ago and she mentioned she was experimenting with reusable alternatives to sanitary towels and tampons. Natural sea sponges are good and absorbent but they're also made from dead animals; foam rubber artificial sponges are less absorbent; cotton terry towelling is bulky. The conversation eventually got turned around to "Could you eat a diet that gave you all the nutrients your body required and also eliminated, or at least minimised your use of toilet paper?"
I don't think either of us ever tried a TP-free diet in earnest, and I've lost touch with her since then.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The sit down toilet we use today is actually over-engineered as it is.
The squat toilet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squat_toilet is more sanitary, better for posture and relieves such things as piles (hemorrhoids).
A/C
lovely - I see that my word to prove I'm not a script is "overflow" - not an issue with squat toilets.
So, yeah, I'm unhealthy -- but it's not my fault
I don't wish to be mean, but if this is caused by a lousy diet, surely it is.
I guess he could stop eating. I am faced with that choice frequently. It hurts to eat. It is similar to food allergies...you have no clue what is in what you are eating. Playing russian roulette isn't always fun. I usually eat a ton when I know I am in a safe place to suffer....such as at home...thus when I am out people always get mad because I didn't eat very much. Well, you wouldn't eat very much if you knew 20 minutes after you did, you'd be spending 4 hours in the toliet in pain.
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain