19 Jan
2025
19 Jan
'25
4:50 a.m.
On 2025-01-19 3:07 a.m., Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 08:27:05PM +0000, Pete
Turnbull via cctalk wrote:
[...]
TTL???
Old relays work better!
Thinking of some sort of robot I read about from 1960's book.
My robot vacuum has taken to asking "Please
empty my dustbin and clean my
filter" about 5 minutes after I did that. More annoyingly, it insists that
"I'm stuck. Please move me so I can recover my position" about 15 seconds
after it's successfully docked with its charging station.
That's "smart" devices for you.
My robot vacuum is extremely dumb and after observing it bimbling around the
room, I decided that it had so few brains that it could be done with a
handful of 74-series chips. Indeed the only reasons that it couldn't have
been made in the 1970s is that it's powered by a high-density rechargable
battery and doesn't need constant feeding with expensive lantern batteries,
it has the obligatory searing-blue LED to tell me it's turned on because
apparently moving around and making a racket isn't a big enough clue, and
that it's not in that depressing cream and brown colour scheme which was
apparently a legal requirement for "white" goods back then.