Show HN: Loodio – A Bathroom Privacy Device
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?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 220 ms ] thread[edit: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/skin-irritated... ]
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!
Doing your business next to a stranger in Tevas with hobbit feet and a serious gastro intestinal issue is nightmare fuel for me.
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)
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 think it's also highly dependent on your cultural background and upbringing.
I'm not sure that's true. Given enough time it could change. I'm just not sure why we'd want it to. I'm perfectly content to leave some things a mystery and that includes what anyone else is doing in the bathroom.
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...
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 was a bit of a mind opener for me.
But there is another series of products, you drop a few drops in the toilet before pooping and it's remarkably effective at eliminating the after stink that wafts out smelling up the building.
First one (which I could never find again) was called "Whoopsie Poopsie" but there is also one called "Just A Drop Before You Go". Both were very effective and there are probably other brands that do the same thing.
https://prelamshop.com/en/
Passing along because I wish I'd known of these a long time ago they would have saved a lot of discomfort and embarrassment.
How long does the music play for? Does it keep stopping and you have to wave your arms around while on the can to get it to start again?
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=2255
What if it's the other way around?
https://lennytroll.com/
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.
Working from home.
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/loodio/loodio-bathroom-...
Love a good "caught red-handed" internet moment, but this one might be Occam's Razor.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety%E2%80%93ninety_rule
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.
Would’ve gone with whale songs for a more authentic nature experience but that’s just me.
Non-sequitur: I am really disappointed that I have not seen a brown noise joke on these threads yet.
I'm also not sure if announcing anyone I'm doing stuff in the bathroom is what I'd always want.
Try listening to "The Great Mighty Poo" : https://youtu.be/Vdd4rBlsj2o
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."
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"
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.
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?
I question the ability to actually undo the sounds.
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.
Working at home.
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'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.