Show HN: Loodio 2 – A Simple Rechargable Bathroom Privacy Device
I posted here some years ago trying to raise money for a Kickstarter for a product I call Loodio.
Loodio is a motion activated music player for bathrooms that plays music during the bathroom visit to give users privacy during their sacred moments.
The kickstarter failed, but I managed to create a product eventually with a lot of effort.
I managed to sell 150 units of the first unit, mostly to United States but to all different parts of the world while working on the next version.
The problem with the first version was that it was running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W (that had to be wall connected) and it was pretty big, had crappy sound and took a minute to start since it had to boot a whole linux system. I was running it on a python script and unix services. To add music, people had to SSH into the unit so you can imagine how painful that was for some.
However customers loved it! But I knew I could do better. The most common request was battery operation.
Here are some reviews of version 1: https://loodio.com/pages/reviews
I'm proud to say that Loodio 2 is finally here and is working like I imagined when I started working on it almost 5 years ago now.
Loodio 2 introduces battery operation with 1 week of battery life (~5 hours of active operation). It has great sound and an easy way to add your own music with SD card support (4GB included).
It doesn't require any app. Can be run without WiFi (however you lose some features like internet radio, time updates, software updates and weather)
Why does it have a display, you may ask? Because, I used to have an electric toothbrush that came with a display. That display showed how long you were brushing to make sure you did your 2 minutes per brush. When I wasn't brushing my teeth, it showed the current time. And I stopped using the electric tooth brush (because a dentist told me they are too harsh on your teeth) but kept the display for probably 5 years afterwards because I noticed I really want to know the time while getting ready for school/work in the morning. Another thing I noticed was that I always check the weather outside, so I could dress appropriately.
So, Loodio shows you the time and weather (optionally) as well as playing music during your visit. These features together with the lights, are features that I think people don't expect to use but with time becomes as important as the music. Customer interviews verify this.
I wasted a lot of money trying to outsource the development the first 18 months. I then decided to start doing it myself. The version I'm selling is actually the 25th(!) iteration of the product. The problem with hardware is that it takes you around a month to iterate a circuit (if you don't live next to the factory in Shenzhen) because of the cycle 'Designing->Order from China->Testing->Repeat'. And I had no experience of electronics when starting out.
The enclosure is made from empty PCBs to save money for injection tooling later. It looks pretty cool. But mainly, works great!
I want to give credit to Tadeusz Karpinski and Velimir Stoleski that ported my crappy python script to the ESP32 that is running Loodio 2.
You need to try it! I really think you're gonna like it! https://loodio.com
I had thought that noise machines were primarily for people who would be listening. For example, therapists put white noise machines in the waiting area, not where the session is occuring.
So, this sound provides the sense of privacy but would be better set up outside the bathroom to those who might hear, uh, human sounds inside.
As a thought experiment, imagine that the Loodio is actually playing loud farting/plopping noises. In that case, placing it outside the bathroom would make it easy to distinguish between the "real" and the "fake" noises: the real ones have the bathroom acoustics. Placing it inside would make it impossible to discern.
Now imagine that the Loodio is playing dubstep, which is barely a step removed from "loud farting/plopping noises". What is the ideal location now?
>> Yes!
>> Every Loodio sold after 2025 runs on batteries.
Interesting but rather than wait for 2026, what about the ones sold now? ; - )
Might want to reword it to be something like "Every Loodio sold from 2025 onwards runs on batteries."
And on a more substantial point: isn't Loo primarily a British term? I'd be surprised if it's well understood in most other countries whereas toilet (vulgar as it sounds to certain Brits) is fairly widely understood. Maybe this isn't a big deal but you'd think the name was kind of crucial to getting the purpose of this gadget.
Well... it's crucial for the portmanteau to work ;)
Congrats for the realisation nevertheless!
initially i was thinking this was some groundbreaking technology that would somehow help with privacy via fancy audio engineering - but alas it seems like just a portable speaker with a cute design.
anyway, congrats on the launch of V2 - it's valid if it's a passion project and you had fun building it in any case, just curious about why anybody would choose this over the plethora of other portable speakers
is the killer feature here motion detection ? because that seems like it can also be accomplished via a third party motion sensor + Apple Home integration
Even when I live with others, we aren't worried about bathroom noise.
I guess if you have a habit of talking to yourself while using the bathroom or showering and need to drown it out this is cool.
However, I'd love this as a general device. I get home and it auto plays music , etc
I think there's a specific target customer that would love this. I'm in the same camp you are... I couldn't care less. When it's just my wife and I at home it's pretty rare that we close the door even.
In university though I had a roommate who was absolutely paranoid about people hearing her in the bathroom. She would generally run the faucet the whole time she was in there to mask the sounds. Sometimes... I think she'd even run the shower; I don't know this for sure, but I'd hear the shower running in the bathroom for a while and she'd come out looking just as un-showered as she had when she went in.
You can do this with most home automation systems today.
As a seller it's none of your business what end users do with your device as long as it's not a safety hazard.
But I gotta ask: how much **** noise are you lot making in the toilet? What on earth are you all doing in there...!?
The speaker starts blasting “Eye of the Tiger” into the foyer.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/47/79/c0/4779c078d42b9faf8dda...
I read this and understand what it is. I then went to the site and it says bathroom privacy, tells me it's version two etc.
What on earth is it! Your very first thing you show me as a new person is to tell me it's got better sound than the unknown previous item. Upgraded sound is a feature that is relevant to
1. The 250 people that bought the first one that didn't like the sound
2. Anyone who would have bought the first one, but didn't because of the sound.
Nobody else.
Assume I've not given up by now, but customers are very quick to leave with even just minor delays. I see a little radio like thing in a CGI setup. (note for later, you do have actual pictures and they don't look the same, so I don't know what I will get and that dramatically lowers my trust)
Is it a privacy device? It's for relaxing? I have to charge it every week?
I genuinely have no idea at this point what problem it is solving.
I have to go down further to figure that out.
Here's the question I have as a potential customer.
Why is my phone not enough? Or a radio? The first I already own, and plays any music I want and has speakers and absolutely has the time and the latter is incredibly cheap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1m29cNVsc
Do you have to certify compliance with safety / EMC regulations to sell a product like this? The thought of that always put me off imagining a hardware startup.
RF/EMC: definitely. It's an intentional radiator (WiFi) and an unintentional radiator (high-frequency CPU). Using pre-certified COTS modules helps with this quite a bit because they'll, hopefully, pass on their own but they do not relieve you of the certification burden.
Safety: from a legal perspective I don't believe safety certification is mandatory because it runs on low voltage. The wall wart would need to be certified. But... from a liability perspective it might still be necessary. If one of these devices were to catch fire and burn someone's house down the company is going to get sued. Maybe sued by the homeowner, maybe sued by the homeowner's insurance company. The counter to that is to have solid product liability insurance and the insurer may have specific safety certification requirements before they'll even issue an insurance contract, and they may have additional safety certification options that would reduce the premiums.
The whole story around needing to know the time sounds like feature creep. If I wanted a clock in my bathroom it's trivial to hone, and I'd only have to charge it once a year. If I want a device that detect my literal movements during movements, then I'd really not want it to be hooked up to my Wifi? Worse, be burning power (and increased BoM) to have a wifi-radio and screen to do so.
If this was _just_ a motion detecting device that played nice music it'd likely be an easier sell?
I'd love to read a full write up of how you designed it, what parts you used / how you designed, prototyped, and built any custom parts, etc.
I know that's a big ask, so wouldn't expect you to do it just for me, but in case writing that were something you've been considering... please know that I for one would be a very keen reader, and I'm confident many others would too. (Or to put a spin on it to help encourage you to do so... it would give you an excuse to post about this here again in a month or two, an extra round of marketing for the low price of your time doing the write-up :P)
And the market is then flooded with much cheaper Chinese knock-offs.
Kevin O'Leary has been talking about this exact scenario many times recently.
Now every digital radio I ever had is worse in terms of the simplicity of the interface. A radio like this one simply asks two questions: (1) How loud? (2) Should it be something else?
And this is your direct competitor. Your devices interface looks more complicated than that so getting people to grok it is motion activated is probably the key piece of information you need to deliver. The weather and time is a nice touch, but may be a thing most people don't need/want while driving the price up.
If we go to the question style of object-human interaction let me impersonate your device from the perspective of a guest:
(This is ofc humourous exaggeration, but there is some truth in there)Everybody shits, farts, burps... device or no device. I´d say those who feel the need for a device like this are guilty by association of farting and burping even louder than average, why otherwise get something to mask their clearly obnoxious and dare I say noxious emanations in the privy?
This seems like a jump. Social etiquette is important. A desire for visitors (or others) not to be subjected to the various sounds emanating from the bathroom is a form of politeness, not cover-up of something more sinister.
Nope, this is taking social sensitivity far too far. By all means keep those farts out of polite company but once you're in the loo feel free to let it fly without feeling ashamed. Everyone farts, everyone pees, everyone does it.
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What's the audio output of your device? Asking for a friend.
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