{"id":12,"date":"2004-01-13T19:02:33","date_gmt":"2004-01-14T02:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=12"},"modified":"2004-01-13T19:02:33","modified_gmt":"2004-01-14T02:02:33","slug":"smoke-detector-usability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/archives\/2004\/01\/13\/smoke-detector-usability\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke detector usability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know these things save lives and all, but I really hate the ones we have in our home.<\/p>\n<p>When their batteries get sufficiently drained, they emit a short, annoying, <em>loud<\/em> chirp once a minute.  It seems to me that whoever thought this up never lived in a home with a smoke detector in every room.  It takes around 10-15 minutes to track down which smoke detector is complaining, because:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We have a lot of smoke detectors.<\/li>\n<li>The chirp is too short to get a good fix on the location immediately.<\/li>\n<li>Funny acoustics can play tricks.<\/li>\n<li>I have to wait a full minute to refine each guess.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ten to fifteen minutes isn&#8217;t a long time, but it&#8217;s longer than it ought to be.  Listening to the shrill, piercing chirp doesn&#8217;t make the time spent any more enjoyable. (And why do these chirps always seem to start in the middle of the night while you&#8217;re sleeping?) The chirps seem to go on forever; just how low on power can the batteries possibly be?  At my old apartment complex in Berkeley, I listened to one go on <em>for weeks<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>What I don&#8217;t understand is that <strong>the smoke detectors are wired to get power from the house<\/strong>.  The batteries are supposed to be used only as a backup.  How are they getting depleted so quickly?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, a good high-tech solution would be to connect all the smoke detectors to a network and to have a central monitoring system.<\/p>\n<p>Better low-tech solutions:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"expanded\">\n<li>Use a <strong>rechargeable battery<\/strong>; signal a warning only when the battery can no longer retain a sufficient charge.<\/li>\n<li>Use <strong>visual cues<\/strong> instead of (or in addition to) the chirps for battery warnings.  For example, a smoke detector could turn off its power LED when battery power is low (and thereby save electricity too); it could release a short, brightly colored ribbon and let it hang; or it slide open a hatch that reveals some brightly-colored material underneath.<\/li>\n<li>Use less annoying chirps and <strong>chirp more frequently<\/strong>.  It&#8217;s silly to design a smoke detector that can signal a low-battery warning for several weeks.  Even two chirps in quick succession would be a huge improvement.<\/li>\n<li>Get a dog.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know these things save lives and all, but I really hate the ones we have in our home. When their batteries get sufficiently drained, they emit a short, annoying, loud chirp once a minute. It seems to me that whoever thought this up never lived in a home with a smoke detector in every [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantsraves","category-usability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slimjimmy.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}