Shoutout to the weirdest plumbing call I ever got in Boise

Got a call about a 'smart toilet' that kept flushing on its own at 3 AM, scaring the homeowner's cat. I show up, and it's one of those new models with a motion sensor and an app. Turns out, the owner's sleep tracker wristband was sending a signal the toilet read as a hand wave from across the bedroom. We fixed it by just turning off the auto-flush feature. Honestly, are these things a real upgrade or just a fad waiting to glitch out? Has anyone else dealt with smart home stuff causing more problems than it solves?

3 comments

3 Comments

margaret73622d ago

Had a similar thing with my smart lights... they kept turning on in the middle of the night because the motion sensor picked up my curtains moving. It was a whole mess. Ended up just putting them on a basic timer schedule instead. Sometimes the simple fix is the best one. All that extra tech just adds more points of failure.

margaret73622d ago

Totally agree about adding more points of failure. My neighbor's smart lock once decided it didn't recognize their phones and locked them out in the rain. They had to call a locksmith to drill it out, which kind of defeats the whole "convenience" thing. It feels like we're solving problems that didn't exist with gadgets that create new, weirder ones. Give me a dumb switch and a regular key any day.

charles_baker2821d ago

Remember when a gadget just did its one job without getting confused? @margaret736 has the right idea about simple fixes. What happens when the company that makes your smart toilet or lock goes out of business and the app stops working? Are we just buying expensive paperweights that need a software update to flush?