Submitted 14 hours ago by catharso@discuss.tchncs.de to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
https://discuss.tchncs.de/pictrs/image/f4834c45-c636-47e3-807f-70c8ea13d890.webp
This is a Levoit Vital 100 and it has a timer to switch itself off after x hours but i’d like to turn it on automatically.
I’m somewhat fit with soldering and taking stuff apart but i don’t wanna go that route before i have atleast a rough understanding of what’s up with those buttons.
Thx! 🙂
I don’t remember the brand but there are smart home button pushers for this thing. I have no idea how well they work or anything, but it’s a product at least one company made at least one point in time.
SwitchBot
You just need a humanoid robot with the latest AI. Then you explain what you want it to do, and if it doesn't murder you or make you its slave, you might be alright.
If it’s on when you unplug it, does it go back on when plugged in? If so then turn off its own timer and just use a regular appliance timer.
oh man, you got my hopes there for a sec.
sadly it didn’t work.
Aww. Modern tech is too ‘smart’ for its own good.
Is using a Christmas light timer not an adequate solution to this problem?
No, it appears that just plugging it in won’t make it go, you have to plug it in and press the button.
As everyone says, what happens if you just turn on the power at whatever time?
I’ve always wondered if something like this would work:
Take a relatively short bit of wire, make a flat spiral at one end about the size of the button, tape that spiral to the button. Then take the other end of the wire hook it up to a relay with the other end attached to ground (or any big metal object probably). I would imagine then closing the relay is “touching” and opening the relay is “not touching”.
I have no idea if that would actually work, but it seems to me like it should. You just need something to interrupt the electric field above the “button”.
quite a few simply turn back on if you pull the power and reconnect afterwards
YetAnotherNerd@sopuli.xyz 14 hours ago
Yes. SwitchBot is the biggie but there are a ton of knockoffs (google “smart button pusher”). The catch is that the security is crap - fine for what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t use it for a garage door, for instance.
I think you’d need a shortcut or script on a computer to run a scheduled task or cron job to start it, but pretty sure that’s available too. (Note - looked at them briefly, just wanted to respond while it was fresh in my mind)
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
it works for capacitive buttons?
solrize@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
It doesn’t look that way. us.switch-bot.com/pages/switchbot-bot
solrize@lemmy.ml 14 hours ago
Oh man switchbot is scary, a lot of awful looking IOT stuff though with one wall switch flipping peripheral. I think I’d just rip into the air filter with a soldering iron. Also better check whether the buttons are capacitive.
YetAnotherNerd@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
There are some where there’s no hub, just a standalone (I can’t be arsed to check if you still need the job for switchbot itself). Worth looking at the knockoffs since I know some exist that don’t need anything else. And I wish the security were better, but for a simple case like this I think they’re fine.