Show HN: Loodio – A Bathroom Privacy Device
Show HN: Loodio – A Bathroom Privacy Device
62 points by testmasterflex 6 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 106 comments
Hi HN!
A few years ago our company moved to a new office. That office has a insufferable bathroom in terms of privacy. You could hear a needle fall on the floor inside of it which made it very uncomfortable to use the bathroom.
Many people ran the tap water or fake coughed to cover their “noises”, especially doing “no 2”.
I got sick of not being able to be comfortable in the bathroom and hearing everyone’s toilet business so I decided to make a music player using a Raspberry Pi and soldered on a motion detector that started a white noise and music whenever you entered the bathroom to hide these sounds.
A lot of people said they wanted one so I thought hey I should try to make this into a product.
A lot of time and money was wasted hiring consultants until I 13 months ago said “enough of wasting money, I’ll just build it myself”.
Today I launched a kickstarter and am selling 50 units.
Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/loodio/loodio-bathroom-...
I know people in US have loud fans and such to cover for this, and a lot of people just play music on their phones but the problem with that is: when you manually play music in there you indicate you are going to do something embarrassing!
How else are you solving this problem?
I tried all existing solutions like the Sound Princess from Japan and other chinese crap on Amazon/Ali but they were not up to the task.
I think there could be a market for Loodio.
What do you think?
I'm a human and I'm not embarrassed of doing what every human does. I think farts are kind of funny too. I heard a dude moaning once, that was awkward but I just assumed he's gonna feel a lot better after everything is said and done.
The real issue is lack of privacy. Worst problem I ever had was a kid crawling under the stall at Red Robin and saying "dad", and I was like no bro, I don't think your dad is in here.
I hear that in Europe you have to pay to access a stall. Are those doors more secure and therefore private? Otherwise crawling under like that kid means you can use the toilet for free.
They usually run down to the floor in my experience, and are generally much nicer in general. I wish NYC would do paid bathrooms instead of just having no public bathrooms.
Accidental misclicked and launched previous version. (Kickstarter has a confusing UX)
It had FM-radio that didn't work and a crappy nokia 5110 display.
We were "95% done" with that prototype, according to the consultants, and I was 60K in. I decided to pull the handbrake after realising that was not going to end well when I had no clue how to build the unit and those "5%" would probably cost me another 100% if you know what I mean.
I have since needed to learn how to design PCBs and mechanical design, redesigned everything from scratch and now ready to sell some units. Super stressful period.
Hehe. Nice detective work. OP did say they moved to the office a couple of years ago, and his idea came about 13 months ago, so perhaps he jumped the gun on creating the project then withdrew it?
Love a good "caught red-handed" internet moment, but this one might be Occam's Razor.
Neat idea but I'm not yet convinced this speaker masks any revelant bathroom sounds* and has no real added value over a water proof Bluetooth speaker (e.g. Fugoo). That's not to say the product is wrong/bad but the Kickstarter content just didn't convince me. (A video with actual demo from the outside would go a long way.)
I was also confused by the product wanting to be an all in one device for setting the "date night" mood, showing me the time, being a light source, etc. I think these are all distractions and should be cut from your plans. I imagine it would reduce your footprint and costs.
Still rooting for your success, thanks for trying to solve this problem!
* Elongated toilets are common in US and echo loudly. I can't imagine a speaker canceling out those sounds.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't the white noise near the source mostly just affect the perception of sounds for the person in the toilet, and less so for the people outside?
Kind of like if you're doing the dishes and have the water running, people can hear you just fine, but you can't hear anything that's said to you.
I know in psychologists' offices they often have the white noise device in the waiting room for this reason.
It would be better if the device played the sound of someone aggressively having diarrhea. Then, the people outside wouldn't know if it were the person or the device.
It does block all sounds and it's not very loud either. It's actually a waterfall sound I recorded on a vacation. We have been using it for 3 years now and you can now relax in our office bathroom. Sometimes I remove the unit for testing stuff and people get very annoyed, haha.
> It's actually a waterfall sound I recorded on a vacation.
Would’ve gone with whale songs for a more authentic nature experience but that’s just me.
That was my first thought! The concept works fine for a bathroom with multiple people if they're all trying to go at once. But if you're using this at home, the best place for it is actually outside the single-user bathroom.
> How else are you solving this problem?
The tech companies I've worked at have started to build "gender neutral" bathrooms. They are a fully locked/enclosed rooms with sound proofing, i.e. no gaps at the bottom of the door. Sometimes you need to take a long session or maybe are not feeling great in the bathroom department (Probably TMI) and it's almost as good as WFH.
That's what I liked about some of Google's bathrooms: individual bathrooms with showers even.
One of the advantages of wireless headphones is that you can take a shit while still listening in on those mostly (or even entirely) useless meetings :-)
I think it’s fairly common in Japan to have music continuously playing in shared toilets. With a strong preference for brass bands.
This reminds me of someone I stayed with once in NYC that had a bathroom attached to their living space. He went in, turned on a music player real loud, so I just heard him shitting with loud music playing.
I question the ability to actually undo the sounds.
My company had Sonos in the bathroom playing music non-stop. The best part was that you never knew what you were going to get. Wu-Tang one day followed by Yanni the next.
It is odd that software companies spend a ton of money on amazing office environments yet bathrooms still feel like you are inhabiting a barn yard.
I worked at a startup where the single room bathroom opened into the kitchenette. It's rather unpleasant to smell your co-worker's poo as you're heating up your lunch.
I'm not sure if the office space was like that when they leased it, or if they had it designed that way intentionally due to space constrains. But when they expanded the office, they missed the opportunity to change the bathroom so it opened into a hallway of the new square-footage.
Why not just buy a $30 white noise machine and leave it running all the time?
I never understood why this is bothering anyone, it's part of life! A bit like those toilet sprays...stuff stinks that's it.
For me this is a solution for a non-existing problem.
I can offer a perspective: being a woman in tech is already very othering.
You can be the only person on an entire floor to use that bathroom. Having your coworkers hear what is going on inside can be very distressing (especially when we consider existing taboos).
Some neutral bathrooms that share a room between genders can amplify this, for example where I work there is a shared sink but cabins have wooden doors that go from floor to ceiling. Great to hide from eyesight, not so great for sounds. Exiting the cabin and noticing that a coworker of another gender was in the same room hearing everything you have done can be anxiety inducing.
People with health conditions also come to mind. IBS for example can result in some violent evacuations. Not everyone wants their coworkers to be aware of their health conditions.
People expect privacy, that's it.
That's silly. Wanting privacy during our most vulnerable moments is deeply ingrained into our psyche, all the way down to our lizard brains.
This is a very real and very legitimate problem to be solved.
Surely, you must feel perfectly comfortable walking around naked, having people watch you defecate, or having sex in public? After all, it's part of life!
Won't reply to all the strawmen at the bottom of your post, but I and lots of people don't care what people HEAR while we're using the bathroom.... its a bathroom for god's sake! Everything happening in there is normal and I'm not sure why you are imagining yourself to be "vulnerable" inside a locked private room.
> I'm not sure why you are imagining yourself to be "vulnerable" inside a locked private room.
The whole reason we all agree that having a locked room to do your business in is ideal is because it's such a vulnerable position to be in. We feel better about being in a locked room, but you can never get your basic instincts to not feel vulnerable when you're mid defecation/mid urination. It's animalistic and can never go away.
Quite literally, knowing people can hear us take a dump triggers survival instincts because our brains think we could be alerting predators to our whereabouts while we're not in a position to run or fight
I’m willing to bet 50% of people in the U.S. get anxious when having to do their business in a public bathroom.
Doing your business next to a stranger in Tevas with hobbit feet and a serious gastro intestinal issue is nightmare fuel for me.
I’m one of these people. Luckily as a man, I don’t mind taking a whiz in a public restroom, even if it’s disgusting, but id almost rather have an accident in my car than stop and take a #2 in a nasty gas station restroom. My bathroom at home is a sanctuary and I never take it for granted.
I once had a buddy walk up behind me while I was at a urinal and smack the back of my head - one of the most infuriating things ever. Ever since I'm hyper aware of people behind me at the urinal.
It's funny how people tend to assume their own characteristics are global phenomena, or at least common; isn't it?
Looks like the actual number is somewhere closer to 2.8% - 16.4% of people [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28554367/]. (This study was specifically about "shy bladder" but that seems a pretty close proxy)
Disagree that it's a close proxy. Not being able to perform at all is much different than feeling uncomfortable about people hearing you do said deed.
Not shy bladder at all. I’ll let it rip. Doesn’t mean I or others enjoy the experience.
This is probably an interesting way to group people - those who care vs those who don't. I tend to be very conscious of the noise I'm projecting - I always prefer for people who I can't see to not be able to hear me. I'm not just talking about the restroom - this also includes talking loudly in public, playing music loudly around others, etc. I feel it's like a privacy thing to me. I'd prefer people not to notice me unless it's intentional.
Though I human, I prefer my coworkers think I am a robot.
I honestly don't give a shit if someone knows I'm taking a shit.
It's all fun and games until you have explosive diarrhea and your coworkers are making Taco Bell jokes for the next 6 months.
I am highly sensitive to not bother anyone but I agree with this. This reeks of the tech mentality of trying to overcome nature and separate everyone into neat little pods.
Eventually we are going to have to face and accept our natural human bodies as a species. For hundreds of years the market has offered us escape from them, with new technologies to plaster over our "faults" every decade. If only we had listened to the hairy armpit feminists when they were shouting this at us in the 60s and 70s...
Especially since I kinda doubt said sprays are good for our health. At least they're not better than what they're covering...
There was a story recently about someone having blotchy face issues which got better when they were WFH during the plague but almost instantly came back when they were re-officed. Turns out (via an allergy test) they were allergic to some industrial chemical that, surprise, was one of the chemicals in the toilet air freshener and were basically being pepper-sprayed every time they went in.
[edit: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/skin-irritated... ]
Relaxing music doesn't mask the noises enough I'm afraid you are hoping. It either needs to be very loud or have a different genre, like metal or dubstep to suppress umm... brown noise.
I'm also not sure if announcing anyone I'm doing stuff in the bathroom is what I'd always want.
It also plays a waterfall sound simultaneously that somehow cancels out the other sound. Have had a prototype running for 3 years that's done the job well. No more tap water waste and embarrassing moments.
Loodio means "I hate it" in spanish, so I'd suggest a change of name.
I dunno; seems like a clever coincidence to me.
Yes I learned that some time ago and found it pretty funny so I kept it.
Many of those bidet toilets in Japan have this feature built in. I've never used it myself but I heard the sound they use is running water.
Maybe 'sounds of the sea' works well. Crashing waves, seagull cackles, thunder in the distance. You can easily catch the cadence and thunder along.
Why do you need motion detection, can't you just hook it up with the light switch?
> I tried all existing solutions like the Sound Princess from Japan and other chinese crap on Amazon/Ali but they were not up to the task
Just how loud is your shit? Maybe just ask your coworkers to put on head phones.
"Excuse me everyone, I'm going to the toilet to take a shit so everyone please put on their headphones, cheers!"
Yeah, definitely 0/10 on the awkwardness scale.
> but the problem with that is: when you manually play music in there you indicate you are going to do something embarrassing!
I'm honestly not sure how big of a problem that is. What else would you go to the bathroom for, then pee or poop?
Drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. Seems like the last part is being solved.
Something that sits in a bathroom is likely to need regular cleaning. What's the plan for being able to wash this thing? It seems to have a bunch of open spots for water to seep into the electronics.
Plan is to make it fully water resistant at a later point.
This is a really well thought out product. Well done. You have solved a very real problem with this product in a very fitting way. I also really liked the 3D animation on the kickstarter page. I will buy one as soon as I have some spare cash.
Looks like it could be replaced with Amazon Echo or any similar voice-enabled speaker which is 1/5 of cost.
Or one of the many simple products built for this exact purpose that have been widely available in Japan for decades.
I think the same use case is covered by a radio or speaker that simply plays 24/7 in there. This doesn't need to be a smart device, no motion detection is needed.
IIRC, The Angelic (pub in Islington, London) used to play comedy shows from BBC Radio 4 on a loop. Makes customers smile, covers up noises - everybody's happy.
I agree, this product is unnecessarily overengineered
Or just wire a sound generator into the lighting circuit.
One addition that would be great is a shower timer, and a humidity sensor to auto-detect how long I'm in the bathroom
Thanks for your comment. May I ask what your aiming for by knowing your shower time? To save water?
I guess it is to prevent some people from taking a shower for too long while others are waiting.
I used to not be able to pee (shy bladder?) if a bathroom had even a single other person. But then I was in a situation where I had no choice (regularly) and I simply had to face my problem. It took _years_ and constant mental practice, but I simply got better at dealing with this and I am better off for it.
I hope this works out for you, as I know most people will simply not be able to deal with their discomfort in the same way I did. And telling people to "face their problem" is not the same as saying "face your problem, and also I will make your life a little easier in the mean time."
> started a white noise and music whenever you entered the bathroom to hide these sounds.
If you are looking for music to play, "Let it go" from Disney's Frozen would be perfect.
It is loud enough to cover the sounds, and it is appropriate to the moment.
"Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back anymore..
I don't care what they're going to say"
This has been a product in Japan for decades because they live in such close quarters and are very polite.
Seems like a thoughtful design. Doubling as a Bluetooth speaker is a significant feature.
I'd call a company in this space Sound Hides In Toilets
Active noise cancellation would make for much more amusing how-to videos.
We listened to many "noises" and created a machine learning (model deployed) on edge device which you can put in your bathroom to cancel sounds.
Active noise cancellation doesn't work with speakers in a room.
Passive bass traps then. A bit of googling suggests 200-400Hz is the range they are trying to help with.
“How else are you solving this problem?”
Working at home.
> How else are you solving this problem?
Working from home.
Having an "executive bathroom" is at least 20% of the benefit of WFH. Under-appreciated in discussions about this.
An afternoon "shake the after-lunch drowsies" shower is truly a glorious thing.
That, and also workout during compilation. Which does also seem good for concentration, so win-win?
Haven't had to queue up for the bathroom during work hours in two years!
What was wrong with the sound princess? That's exactly the same product.
So the problem with the princess is that you need to hold your hand in front of a proximity sensor to make it play.
It has the same issue I mentioned in the post, that it announces to everyone that something embarrassing is happening. And the sound was annoying.
Plus you needed to mount it with screws onto a wall, which I guess would be fine if it didn't have the other disadvantages mentioned.
Loodio plays chill music and requires no interaction. Plus it has the night lights and the display, which I want to make larger and have other features planned for it.
Instead of white-noise or music, why not play the sounds of people using the bathroom? You know like, peeing, pooping, farting, chatter, moans and groans. This way our own noises become indiscernible from the background noise.
Imagine to go wash your hands and have the sound of a drunk guy vomiting as ambience :)
You could have different settings, like: Nightclub Wasted, Sporting Event Pumped, Elite Cocktail Hour. All with their own brand of sample sounds.
If the toilet is not the best place for those sounds, I don't know where. As long as the odor is managed, the sounds are inevitable. Maybe a loud air extractor?
If I understand op well, the entire open space can hear what happens inside.
Imagine if every time some of your coworkers go in for a little pee pee, you hear "peeing, pooping, farting, chatter, moans and groans" at maximum volume.
You know what ? That sounds like a hella fun workplace. Don’t forget the gross spitting sound.
Everyone laughs and eventually becomes desensitized to it and thus we lower the stigma of explosive farts and bms.
This way our own noises become indiscernible from the background noise.What if it's the other way around?
I would wait for another place instead of entering into such bathroom...
Wondering how many people will try to time their sounds to the soundtrack for maximum stealth.
Clearly the sounds need to be generated by AI.
"chinese crap"
Uh, I see what you did there OP. How about some modesty there?
> I think there could be a market for Loodio. What do you think?
As others have pointed out, upmarket Japanese toilets have this feature as well as many other comfort features (auto bidet rinse and dry feature etc.)
People who want this feature will therefore just go out and buy a Japanese toilet, since not only will they get the soundtrack but they will get all the fancy comfort features too.
For everyone else, unless a medical condition prevents you from doing so, the answer is simple .... make some very minor adjustments to your diet and you will find you can avoid doing a "no 2" in the office altogether and just do it in the comfort of your own home in the morning and evening.
The problems some people have, I swear... I busted out laughing reading that some people cough trying to cover the sound of shit hitting the water. I thought that was just '90 bad comedy tropes.
How do I solve this "problem"? Simple, it's absolutely no problem at all.
Who the hell cares that your coworkers hear you taking a shit? Guess what, they also take shits and their asses make the same noises, do all of them cover it up in such ridiculous ways? Until today, I didn't even think this was even a problem.
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