this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Dyson gets shit on frequently for being overpriced, but the audible analysis they do one some of their products is crazy complex. Some years ago I watched 30 minute video on the design they did for the hair dryer where they were designing minute angles in the fins of the air impeller, and using a PWM algorithm to measure backpressure in a feed back loop to spin up the fan where it wouldn't create loud noise while also increasing the volume of air moved. They tuned the mechanisms specifically to shave off tiny peaks in oscilloscope readings.

One thing I remember is that they said they couldn't entirely eliminate the specific annoying sound frequencies because it had to ramp, but what they did is ramp to right below the annoying sound frequency level, then hold, then burst above the annoying frequency band very quickly. So the operator of the unit doesn't hear the annoying sound because the device shoots past it so fast.

I've never heard of any company be that picky and put so much effort into avoiding one negative experience of a product.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

And then they go and make an idiotic bathroom hand air dryer that is vertical and unnatural to dip hands into and too small of an opening so as to be difficult to not touch it with your clean hands.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They released that original Airblade hand drying 18 years ago in 2006 way before the hair dryer.

11 years ago In 2013 they released the Airblade V which doesn't do the vertical dip thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well, I see the old one 99 times more often than the new one.

I'm talking about this piece of crap design.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Haven't these been shown to be literally the proverbial shit hitting the fan in terms of spreading bacterial matter everywhere?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes they literally pull in particles from the bathroom air and blow them directly on your hands.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Plus a good chunk of people only wash hands for show: the water runs for 1 sec it barely touches their fingertips, then go on to these dryers and whatever is on their hands flies out everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Wait until you find out the analysis they do on car door closing sounds and the clickiness of specific buttons! Industrial Design is COOOL.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Buying industrial buttons and modding old controllers isn’t really mainstream but damn it should be.

A NES controller with switches and joysticks normally used in a combine harvester is really satisfying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Meanwhile, Subaru phoned it in with their window switches...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They also really really work well, theyre over engineered like crazy but last forever.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The sad thing is the students who actually did the work will probably see no financial gain from this. Students pay to take a class and then a company pays the university for access to the students and the students ideas and work is used by a company with no financial benefit to the students. Everyone makes out except the students.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Actually unless they made it working for the university its normal for students to retain their IP rights.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I worked at a UC and companies retained all IP across all UCs and my undergrad school from the east coast was the same way. I've never heard of a university that let students keep their IP. I would imagine it would be hard to attract outside companies since the companies pay to be a part of the program. Can you point to a university program that allows students to retain their IP for senior design projects? I know if a student is doing a project through the school for a different class like a lab and they invent something or are volunteering the university has no claim to it but senior design is different.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sure: https://www.research.psu.edu/otm/student_IP_guidance

This is something I've remember over hearing as well from a FOSS advocate as bit of complexity they deal with.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

So it looks like for senior design classes the students don't have to be associated with projects where they lose their IP rights. But sponsors have the right to say a project will give all IP to the sponsor. I imagine how this works in practice is all external companies will require they retain IP then the professor creates additional projects where ip can be retained but these are usually canned projects solving some trivial problem that won't really allow the students to go anywhere interesting with the project. I am not saying that's the case but I remember at my undergrad and at the UC school that was the case.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How come there are no student unions?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

There are graduate students unions or research assistant unions. Undergraduates (not ones working in a lab) don't work for the university they are customers. It would be like members of a gym unionizing. I guess it could happen maybe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (8 children)

It's almost like it's a requirement for every landscaping company to use the most noisy, ear destroying, gas-powered leaf blower that they can buy that can be heard from 2 city blocks over.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Especially gas-powered as they can then rev them all the time, raising the annoyance to completely new levels.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Probably. lol. You look out the window to see what's making all that racket, and you see their logo on their truck / shirts.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Cool, do they offer whistle tips?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

It's that woo-woooooo

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Patent pending" and already picked up by a major manufacturer. So what this means is basically while it could be a good thing... the article is basically an advertisement for an upcoming product.

Not nearly as good a thing until it gets copied/the patent gets worked around. Also, zero explanation of what was actually done to accomplish this, so again, leaning more towards "this is just advertisement with extra steps".

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

....is this not just a muffler/silencer for leaf blowers? Good on these kids! This definitely falls under the 'why didn't I think of that!' category for me.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

it's electric.

Which means it's automatically 200x quieter than a two stroke.

Idk what else they did but im pretty sure it makes almost no difference lmao.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Good job not reading any part of the article and confidently announcing your completely incorrect take on things to everyone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

correct me if im wrong here, but gas leaf blowers are inherently many times louder than electric leaf blowers to begin with. Calculating the near field DB levels doesn't really count here since most of the annoyance is actually going to be from other people who have to listen to it running.

And since electric leaf blowers often have a much higher pitch, that pitch attenuates at a much greater rate, especially compared to that of an ICE meaning that it's often silent, if not very quiet, at the same distance that an ICE would be rather loud at.

Also, in my defense 90% of articles these days are not worth reading, i'm sure they probably did something as i literally mentioned in my previous comment, but like i said, comparing this to a traditional ICE leaf blower (which people seem to fucking love for some reason) in comparison i'm still pretty confident that this would make almost zero fucking difference, since the vast majority of noise coming from an ICE blower is not air noise, but engine noise.

But yes thank you for telling me that i'm wrong and bad for not reading an article about an item that has probably 20-30% market share from my anecdotal experience.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Too bad no one invented rakes yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

spoilersdfsaf

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It been brought by Black & Decker, no ?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

It looks like it was sponsored by black and decker but the whole article looks like an ad for Dewalt...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I forgot that this device is still being used lol. Masovian Voivodeship in Poland banned leaf blowers in 2021 as part of air quality regulation and... air actually got cleaner and no one complains about leaves on sidewalks

https://samorzad.infor.pl/sektor/zadania/srodowisko/6408199,zakaz-uzywania-dmuchawy-do-lisci.html

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't mind the electric ones, but I had a neighbour that would fire up a two-stroke backpack monster at 6 AM any morning there was the barest skiff of snow. And he'd try for hours blowing heavier snow that he could have had shovelled in 15 minutes. He was generally just an asshole neighbour all around.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

we had a thread a while ago, and some dude was in there insisting that blowers can be "used for snow" because apparently snow blowers don't fucking exist.

People are fucking weird dude.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

I've used one for a very light coating or powdery snow, but more than a couple inches of that it's just easier and faster with a shovel

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