Category: Rants

I was wandering around my esteemed local hardware store (Bunnings) and obtained an Arlec Wireless LED Sensor Kit. I’d been looking for something to give “under cabinet” lighting, particularly at night in my bathroom. Not wanting to get mains power outed to near floor height in a wet room, this looked like a great solution.

The kit consists of three “bars” of LEDs. One of these bars is a control unit, and also has an IR sensor in it. The other two are slave units to the master containing just an array of LEDs.

For the most part, this does as you want, but with a bit of thinking the product could do so much more. So Arlec, here’s some product research that frankly, you could have done in 20 minutes of thinking about your product:

1. The light stays on for one minute, and then goes off. Regardless if the IR has been triggered again, during the last 60 seconds, its on for 60 and then off. Followed by madly trying to re-trigger this in the darkness. Surely if the IR triggers again you should reset the timer.
2. Who choose 60 seconds? This should be configurable by the user. Minimum 5 seconds, maximum an hour?
3. When the lights come on, they come on at 100%. Making an ease-in, ease-out to bring them up to “full brightness” would be much nicer.
4. Why have the LEDs always go to 100% brightness. Perhaps that should be configurable.
5. The LEDs are quite a cold white color. For me, Warm white would have been nicer. Others may want specific colour.
6. When triggering, the slave units take some time to come on, and they trigger on in a random order. I have mine all in a tight two, and I’d be happy to run a small 2 or 3 wire cable between them and have them trigger simultaneously. Furthermore, with only 3 channel available, I’m limited to deploying this in larger settings. If I wire slaves together, then they should ignore their wireless receivers.
7. The random order triggering of the slave units should be configurable. I may have a set of 10 of them going up some stairs, and want to put a 50ms delay as the light appears going up the stairs. Coupled with ease-in and brightness control this could look quite good.
8. The master unit has the IR and a bank of LEDs, but I may not want LEDs where my IR trigger is: separate the IR and control unit into its own module.
9. Give me the option of having multiple IR sensors (perhaps either end of the array of lights) to trigger the LEDs.
10. Sell additional slave units individual, and in 5 packs.
11. 3 channels is not enough if I have multiple sets in close proximity, and subject to interference. So give me the option of disabling the wireless signalling completely.

A smaller form factor would also be neat – perhaps a hard-wired version that could sit flatter under surfaces and be less obtrusive. But that’s my first few things that I think a bit or R&D would uncover.

In the mid 80s, my Dad wrote a lyrics for a song for my primary school – Woodlands -  with one of our neighbours creating the music. It became the official school song for nearly 30 odd years, and was only recently supplanted. I was trying to remember the lyrics, and found only one document with it left on line, so I thought I ‘d paste it here to preserve it a little longer.

At the bottom of the hill

Nestling by the trees

Warmed by the sun

Cooled by the breeze

There’s a place for learning

There’s a place for fun

It’s the school at Woodlands

We welcome everyone

Banksia gum and wattle

They are just a few

Of the many trees around us

That make our little school

A good place to learn in

A good place for fun

It’s the school at Woodlands

We welcome everyone

The Banksia is our emblem

We wear it with pride

Endeavour is our motto

It means we always try

A good place to learn in

A good place for fun

The BEST school in W.A.

Woodlands number one.

– John A N Bromberger

One saying I’ve used with my teams over the years has been:

Have Backups

Have Monitoring

Monitor your Backups

Backup your monitoring

Its usually lead to things being under control. That extends to things like RAID sets – its nice to have, but its useless unless you’re monitoring for failed disks, otherwise you only notice an issue when the last disk fails.