Reinventing the Clapper With a Knock-Based Home Automation Controller 92
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.
Just because you CAN do something (Score:2, Insightful)
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People used the clapping stuff. It was senseless, but sold.
What I'm waiting for is the phone control stuff. Didn't Google invest in this last year?
Re:Just because you CAN do something (Score:5, Funny)
I'm just thinking of all the dopeslap moments I'll have when sneaking home late at night and having the lights come on just AFTER I smack my head into a wall.
Sounds like good times.
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I'm just thinking of all the dopeslap moments I'll have when sneaking home late at night and having the lights come on just AFTER I smack my head into a wall.
When that happens please keep your eyes tightly closed; otherwise the sparks may fall onto the carpet and cause fire.
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It's an awesome idea for turning all your noisy appliances into a lesson on concurrency and the way it can lead to indeterminate outcomes.
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Re:Just because you CAN do something (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a secret knock detector [youtube.com]?
Re:Just because you CAN do something (Score:4, Funny)
Don't knock it till you tried it.
Great idea until... (Score:4, Funny)
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Sexual lightswitch rave!
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Slashdotters aren't likely to run into that particular problem.
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Great idea! Well, great until you've a lady friend over and the bed scoots just a little too close to the wall.
That just means you need to learn how to tie knots properly.
Re:Are Americans really this lazy? (Score:4, 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.
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You have 75 year old wiring? And the place hasn't burnt down yet? Or do your lights flicker every time your freezer compressor comes on?
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There's a reason why old wiring should be replaced. The older wiring just isn't designed for modern day loads. And no earth wire? Really?
Re:Are Americans really this lazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
75 year old wiring tends to be pretty good. Back then they were doing K&T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knob_and_tube_wiring [wikipedia.org] style. It looks scary as hell but it tends to be pretty safe - since your hot and neutral are separated by a considerable air gap and the wires are thermally insulated from the structure, an insulation failure (abrasion or overheating) usually doesn't burn the house down. It doesn't have modern safety features like a safety ground, but the actual wiring is fine.
The switch away from it has more to do with cost than safety. The guys installing it usually knew what they were doing and paid much better attention to detail than the average contractor dragging romex these days. It took a lot of time, but it was a reliable and safe system, and if it's installed, there's no reason to rip it out and replace it just because it's old.
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Several points about K&T:
1) Good luck with insurance on it. Certainly where I am, they won't insure you unless you promise you're re-wiring.
2) No ground wire? Seriously? I don't even know where to begin with this one!
3) The really early insulators consisted of tar and cotton. So let me get this straight - it's a good idea to use two accelerants in wooden buildings, where modern day loads could cause the wires to get hot.
That's real smart!
As for your comments about the installers "usually" knowing what t
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2) No ground wire? Seriously? I don't even know where to begin with this one!
Grounded house wiring (pos, neg, ground) is fairly recent. Until a couple of decades ago it was rare to find it in homes. Before then it was almost always "hot" and ground.
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I live in an apartment building constructed in the mid-1930s and it looks like most of the wiring dates from back then, too.
Apart from the kitchen, which was remodeled 10 years ago by the previous owner, all of the wiring consists of cloth-insulated individual conductors inside copper tubing. I had to replace a light switch last year and the insulation literally crumbled to dust wherever I wasn't extremely gentle with it.
Ground wires? Well, the oven and the washing machine have safety grounds. Everything el
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I lived in this house [google.com] several years ago. Built in 1918, thoroughly modern with gas and electric... it still had a gaslight fixture at the top of the stairs. It had additional wiring installed over the years, in fact my basement was a good museum of electrical wiring with about every kind there was. The K&T wiring was solid, much better than some 30 years younger.
Now, if you have a house built in the 1970s with aluminum wiring you'd damned well better have some great insurance. Those houses were firetrap
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Belgians wire long corridors with switches at each end in series.
I could try and fix it, but I'm afraid to touch it for fear of what I might find.
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Also handy if you have a room with 3 entrances, but only one has a light switch, etc.
Motion detector?
That clapper is going to make sneaking into the house late at night without waking the wife really tough.
Re:Are Americans really this lazy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like a win-win
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This whole thing really sounds to me like a solution looking for a problem.
That is the essence of the clapper: it is totally unnecessary. No one needs it; no one needs most of the things we discuss on Slashdot. But there are still people who want to discuss them just like there are people who want the clapper.
Re:Are Americans really this lazy? (Score:5, Insightful)
You walk a couple meters to use a lightswitch? How fucking lazy are you? Active people like me go down to the breaker in the basement to turn the lights on and off, and then jog two laps around the house for good measure.
Word to the wise: laziness is not doing something potentially beneficial because you prefer to just sit around doing nothing. There is no gain from flipping a light switch, and therefore it's not lazy to find more convenient ways of doing it. You might as well bitch about people being too lazy to use a crank starter for their car.
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Acting unimpressed makes a nerd appear smarter. It's risky, though, that's why statements like "less space than a nomad, lame" have a way of haunting you.
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ALL: They won't [phespirit.info]!
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There is no gain from flipping a light switch
But there is. A light switch is a passive element, it consumes no power on its own. Any remote controller including the one in TFA will expend power 24/7 doing nothing but wait for your commands.
You insensitive clod! (Score:2)
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You're speaking as though you don't have a mobile phone or a bunch of remote controls orbiting your couch.
Enter port knocking. . . (Score:2)
the clapper work for old tv with out a remote like (Score:2)
the clapper work for old tvs with out a remote like the one in the ad. With the ones with remotes killing the power like that just made it lose the channel map.
Now days trying to kill the power like that will just mess up the cable box.
Seance ... knock three times (Score:3)
"Once", "Twice", or "Thrice ... well done."
Next on CNN: Man killed for knocking on wall. (Score:1)
My dog.. (Score:2)
The ultrasonic remote has come full circle (Score:3)
My grandfather had an old Zenith TV set with an ultrasonic remote. Every time someone jingled their keys or flushed the toilet, it would change the channel or adjust the volume. This seems like it will have the same problem.
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My grandfather had an old Zenith TV set with an ultrasonic remote. Every time someone jingled their keys or flushed the toilet, it would change the channel or adjust the volume. This seems like it will have the same problem.
From TFA:
"What is a contact mic? Well, it is just a fancy word for a piezoelectric element. It is very simple to produce, has a non linear response curve and a resonant frequency around 3kHz. Why is it well suited for this project? Because it will only 'listen to' the vibrations of the surface it is fixed to."
Sounds like he might have isolated that particular problem.
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Wouldn't soundwaves going through the air cause the wall to vibrate, even if only slightly?
What about when an airplane flies over head or a large truck drives down the road? In both cases my house shakes a little bit - you can certainly feel the vibration in the walls.
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I would guess the part about the resonant frequency being around 3kHz in addition to the part that it has a non linear response curve helps with this. It would be very very difficult to resonate a wall at 3kHz via a sound wave. Judging by the walls in my house, it's typically 150Hz or less (as cars with subwoofers/missing mufflers drive by.)
Oh, boy! (Score:2)
My poltergeist is going to have fun now!
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Happy Days (Score:2)
Prior art (Score:4, Funny)
The product is clearly a knockoff
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The product is clearly a knockoff
Yes, but he already discussed the issue of paten...ooooh, I see what you did there.
Cheap security system?!? (Score:2)
How long before we take this unit and have it turn on a mp3 player of a large dog barking viciously...
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Reminds me of: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvE9lbr7ZAA [youtube.com]
The people downstairs ... (Score:2)
... can just shut off your loud stereo themselves by knocking on their ceiling with a broomstick.
Knock Offs (Score:1)
So when my Asian friends come over and turn off my lights can I take them to court for infringement?
harass your neighbors with it (Score:2)
Encoding problem. Morse code? (Score:3)
If you have more than one thing to control, you'll need some encoding scheme, like Morse code. This won't scale up well.
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Of course, some people prefer things that way....
Visitors (Score:1)
Better Late Than Never (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaXO3yg1REE [youtube.com]
As someone living in a block of flats (Score:2)
It's already noisy enough without everyone banging on the walls.
Great, Another Insomnia Ad Jingle (Score:2)
A VISITOR! (Score:2)
For you young whippersnappers (Score:1)
Great product for apartments (Score:1)
Isn't this regression? (Score:2)
I would have hoped in the 21st century, you could just say "lights on" or "lights off" to control a lamp, not thump on the wall like a caveman.