[dylan604]

ever been in a room of people sitting in cubicles where the lights are controlled by motion sensor to automatically turn off the lights after a set period of no motion? fun times. it took way longer to get that switch replaced than it should have

[shagie]

I was a contractor at Sun in '97, Palo Alto campus. Initially they put me in a shared office, and that was ok. Later, I got moved to a hallway.

My machine had a hard reboot that first night... I lost my unsaved work and at that point I made it a point of religiously saving my work each evening when I went home... because each night my machine rebooted.

One day it was rather quiet. Might have been day before a long weekend, but it was a slow day in the building - very few people were walking about. I was working... and then my machine lost power. I stood up to figure out what was going on and my machine got power back. Ok... followed power cords to the wall. It was plugged into a gray outlet (rather than white outlet). The gray outlets were hooked up to the motion sensor that was for the hall lighting.

[dylan604]

While that is an interesting issue to deal with, I was totally lost at the concept of not saving before going home. I can't go five minutes without saving, and you were willing to leave the "room" without saving? That's just one of those things so outside my normal that I got lost in thinking about it especially as matter of fact as it was recited. You live in a different realm my friend.

[fluorinerocket]

Yes there are a bunch of terrible ideas in this thread. Video camera controlled lights? Yes f privacy of everyone to save a few bucks? well I think that was sarcastic

Motion controlled lights are always timed badly, incredibly annoying to have them switch off when you are sitting still working or taking a duece.

How about the janitor shuts off the lights after everyone goes home?

[conductr]

How about just forget about this thread and don’t let it be a major annoyance. It’s a very minor annoyance. It would be a more widespread debate/discussion if so many people were upset by it. At the least, just admit you’re in the minority that are so upset by it and then just live with it anyways.

I say that to make a point about magnitude of annoyances. Sure it’s annoying. So are potholes.

It does seem like a slightly smarter device could be built. The times it happens to me, and I wave my hands in the air to turn lights back on, it’s not that annoying. When I’m there for 3 more hours and I have to do it every 5-10 minutes. That’s more annoying. So the simple thing to do is to program the thing to incrementally increase its timer length. 5/10/20/30 minutes might be less annoying. Also if motion is detected a short time after the no motion timer triggers, that’s probably a sign there was someone present the entire time. Can adjust the logic with that in mind too. The current devices are fine it’s the logic that was lazy.

[dylan604]

Potholes are much more than just an annoyance. They can damage your car. Not sure where you live that potholes are mere annoyances, but where I'm from they can be quite large. To the point calling them potholes is stretching the definition. My mom used to joke that she wanted to throw in some water and a loaf of bread into some of them in case someone fell in. They can pop a tire, bend/crack a rim, and they can definitely break steering rods.

The easier thing to do with motion timers would be to only enable them not during work hours. All of the other logic you want to program in them is something easily done today, but definitely not as long as they've been around.

[kbelder]

https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2026/06/like-an-explosi...

$3.86 million claim from a pothole. I'm normally pretty skeptical of damage claims, but that is a pretty nasty pothole.

[conductr]

Potholes aren’t really the core of the annoyance, just like the lights, it’s the control mechanisms around them. Potholes are going to occur yet there’s no proactive repair response. Massive potholes you’re describing rarely show up over night, and it’s very likely many city employees drive over them daily (trash trucks, police, code compliance, water services, etc).

[dylan604]

Oh, see, you must be a city slicker. I grew up in the country where city employees absolutely did not drive over the roads daily if weekly if monthly. In fact, I didn't even live in a city as the area was just unincorporated county land, so there were no city employees. Every now and then, sheriff deputies might roll through.

The country roads that met up to the "big" 2 lane FM where I grew up were all posted 20mph. I remember one evening when my mom got pulled over because the deputy said she was swerving so much that she had to have been drunk. My mom looked at him and politely told him "you swerved around the same potholes I did". My mom never drank.

Also, you really seem stuck on trying to tell me what is annoying or not to the point you are now annoying me

[conductr]

The word annoying was used to describe the lights by the person I was commenting to. I continued using it as a point of context for this conversation that you chose to jump into.

Funny how your mom got pulled over by a police officer serving around potholes that he never noticed because public officials never used those roads. That silly city slicker stuff I suppose. But my point was about control mechanisms and you probably also fail to understand that in a rural setting you were the control mechanism. You are responsible for reporting the potholes. Even us city slickers have that ability. If that information is not acted on or there’s no budget for repairs; well that’s a whole different issue and you should consider that potholes was used as a weak analogy in this discussion about lighting. You keep wanting to argue purely about potholes, which is actually quite annoying.

[lostlogin]

I work in a smart building. Apparently it’s good for hormone health and circadian rhythms to have lights that don’t immediately respond when you press the button, suddenly turn up at 7am when they decided it was ‘daytime’ and turn off unexpectedly as you finish up a late shift.

A light switch that doesn’t respond immediately might be the most frustrating technology life.

[Liftyee]

Smarter device would just require a little more cost. Current devices can work with no code, just analog electronics.

[conductr]

If you’re a cost conscious manufacturer, I think you could do it very cheaply these days (cents/unit). The problem is most manufacturers would turn this into a full blown AI capable smart device to justify charging a lot more.

[fluorinerocket]

I am certainly in the minority and I do live with it.

Things like motion sensor lights, faucets that turn off so quickly that you have to hold your hands in weird position to wash them, 1.6 gallon flush toilets are all completely avoidable things that are forced on us by a misguided sense of doo gooding.

These so called innovations are WORSE than what they replaced, less reliable, and often are so badly designed they accomplish the exact opposite of what they are intended to do.

A increasing retry time motion sensor light switch is a good idea. But then again, wherever these things are installed, they go with the cheapest thing that to meet code and get whatever energy certification.

Zero Fs are given by the people who don't have to use the room. The worst thing will be what is used. That is my experience.

Oh you want to change the timersetting? Guess what that's on a dip switch behind the face plate, and you need to find and shut off the breaker and pull the thing from the wall. Put in a ticket to facilities, we'll get to it never

Yes let's make you flush 5 times to save 0 water over a conventional while we run the sprinklers to keep our immaculate lawn green during a 105 degree summer.

Want to take a nice 5 gpm shower? No, you need to let almond farmers drain the river before it gets to the ocean so everybody can have almond milk. Stay in there twice as long buddy, don't know what to tell you.

[dylan604]

There's something to be said about having lights on in a room that is not occupied the entire time the lights are on. Before LED lighting, it was a decent attempt at reducing unnecessary lighting.