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Reinventing the Clapper With a Knock-Based Home Automation Controller

Posted by timothy on from the scratch-friend-and-enter dept.

An anonymous reader writes with a snippet from Hack a Day: "Clap On! Clap Off! was super awesome when The Clapper came out in the mid-eighties. Now [Mathieu Stephan] is trying to make the concept much more functional. He put together a controller that lets you knock on walls to control things around the house. It's called the Toktoktok project and uses small boxes to receive user input and control items like lamps and computers." As the project website points out, Stephan is keeping the project intentionally open.

3 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Are Americans really this lazy? by Vectronic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not necessarily, or only about laziness, but aesthetics too. Also handy if you have a room with 3 entrances, but only one has a light switch, etc.

  2. Re:Are Americans really this lazy? by Meshach · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To be fair this is not targeted just at turning on and off lights. The article states that is can control any electronic device: computers, music players, cooking... anything. And the creator explicitly says it is unencumbered with patents so it is an idea any one can use to improve any existing technology.

    Sounds like a win-win

    --
    "Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
    Aldous Huxley
  3. Re:Just because you CAN do something by Ihmhi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about a secret knock detector?

    --
    Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)