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acb

This is thoughtful design: Muji apparently released a flashlight that works with any combination of 2 AA and 2 AAA batteries, only more dimly with fewer batteries.

@acb I like that this air traffic control display has two separate power inputs for more/less important components, but... the terminology seems unhelpful.

@davefischer

It could do with a couple more marked “Vital” and “Obligatory”

@acb

@davefischer @acb
Thats from the Bus-Names in an Aircraft.
There are 3 Bus Types "Non-Essential", Essential, and Critical
On the Non-Essetial Bus are things like Galley or Inflight Entertainment. The Esential Bus ist for Everything that is neccesarry for a save flight and the Critial-Bus is for Critical Systems like the Primay Flight Controls and Emergency Lights.

@Aglaia89 @acb Thank you! (I thought maybe it was hospital terminology.)

@acb@mastodon.social I've always assumed that things that "require" X many batteries of X type are depending on all batteries to complete the circuit, not to mention the specific voltages of certain types of batteries. If that is true there's probably a way around it and that's probably what they did -- it's probably more components though and therefore more costly (although, to be fair, it's probably pennies on the dollar per hundred units or whatever).

@blake It's also the sort of thing they'd present at business school as what not to do, next to the case study of the restaurant that increased profits by $100k by removing one olive from each salad and such.

@blake @acb I seem to recall reading some years ago that Microsoft had patented a *really simple* circuit to allow devices that run on one or more AA or AAA cells to auto-sense which way the batteries were inserted and flip polarity as necessary to operate. Can't imagine why this isn't in universal use already …

@rasterweb @cstross @blake @acb Possibly also robustness - another component means another source of failure.

@rasterweb @cstross @blake @acb

Probably more costly than a full bridge rectifier that minimizes the diode voltage drop

@cstross @blake @acb It costs another buck or so and fitting AA cells is heavier and thicker than a tiny prismatic Li cell these days.

@AMS @cstross @blake @acb I like that their failure mode is typically less violently explosive though.

@lispi314 @cstross @blake @acb Yes, but sadly you're not the product manager who has terminal Apple brain.

@cstross @blake @acb

This is not a new thing. I've seen wireless mice that can take one or two batteries. They are wired in parallel, modern electronics can just work with really low voltages.

@slyecho @blake @acb Yes, but that's not the same as "doesn't care what polarity you insert first: automatically detects and compensates for it".

@cstross sorry, missed that part. Technically it could be done with simple diodes, I think.

@slyecho Multiple batteries in random order: not sure simple diodes suffice.

@cvwillegen @cstross this seems to be a purely mechanical solution instead of a rectifier circuit. Should be more efficient.

The order of the batteries wouldn’t matter because they are not connected to each other, only to the circuit after the polarity is corrected.

@blake @acb I wonder if it’s boosting the voltage. If so, it may need a base voltage equal to the output of one cell, and more cells (in parallel) would mean longer runtime.

@rasterweb @blake @acb I thought about this way too much more than I should as the electronics to drive a single source in the way shown in the picture would be complex. Then I realized how they did it - Every cell has its own LED, possibly with a booster (but there are COB modules with it built in). So more batteries equals more active LEDs and higher global brightness.

@rasterweb @blake @acb the grounds are all connected, so you can still use a single pole 😉

@takashioomoto @blake @acb Aha! Duh... I always forget about doing it that way.

@blake @acb It is. If you don't add those other components you end-up with shorting risks, among other fun things.

@blake @acb I guess it all depends on whether they’re in series or parallel

@acb Feels a lot like the stuff we routinely do in programming, because when we don't there's a crash to desktop and customers start demanding refunds.

@wesmorgan1

On the other hand requiring you keep two different sizes of battery on hand for full brightness is kind of abusive.

On a related note, we just discovered that a remote that came with AAAA batteries can also work with AAA batteries, Sony just packaged it with AAAA, presumably to save money.

@resuna I think you meant this response for @acb

@wesmorgan1 @acb I have no idea how your address got in there.

@acb Oh I love this. Have been trying to come up with a compartment lately that accepts 26650 or 3x AA cells.
Wasn't super happy with flaps that fold inward when the 26mm diameter single cell gets shoved into the compartment.

@MisterHW @acb I recently bought a flashlight that came with a plastic insert that carries 3 AAA cells, but which I discarded and replaced with an 18650. Can't remember where I got it from.

@acb Super important thing, especially for cave exploration!

@acb Using two types of batteries in a flashlight is a weird decision though.

@acb

Though in the context of software design, I do prefer progressive enhancement, where the core of the functionality is developed and works well for the most common denominator, with everything extra being optional improvements and capabilities. I think people misunderstand how graceful degradation comes about, and think it's a path of design, but it's a top-down view of an end result. I really doubt good designers follow that, and instead progressively enhance from a fundamental core that works at any cost. It's also always simpler, so easier to ensure it's robust and reliable.

The way a lot of people interpret graceful degradation and how it ends up in software (e.g. websites), is usually people build all the functionality they could ever want first (in e.g. javascript), and only then start thinking what they could cut away for people that lack the resources necessary (e.g. javascript). It typically degrades into dysfunctional garbled mess and then discarded, because it obviously doesn't work, and there aren't enough people to justify the cost, leaving them behind. More often than not "proponents" of graceful degradation in software really end up saying "it's too hard and complex to implement", because they built it all with the costly tools they want (e.g. React or like), for no good reason, which, of course, is going to be nearly impossible to degrade from.

So, in my opinion, progressive enhancement is the better perspective as it looks at things bottom up. Fundamentally - "how can we robustly provide our indivisible core value with the least resources", followed by "what other resources the user has that can improve this experience beyond the base spec".

Here, the flashlight would be designed as:
- AA batteries are the most common, it should work with a single AA battery,
- AAA batteries are the second most common, they should also be able to use those,
- let them mix and match multiple batteries to provide more output,
- etc.

In the context of web design:
- everyone can handle HTML, all content and functionality works using this core functionality
- almost everyone has CSS, so we can enhance the behaviour and appearance of our site with it
- lots of people have JS, so we can enhance functionality further.
- there's 3rd party functionality we can integrate on top of all of this (which people nowadays block quite often, or have issues with, so it would be last)

Graceful degradation would inherently come from this path, as you can peel the "extra" layers back until the core of what it provides, and it'll work at each point. With some more careful design, you can break the layers independently even.

@evolbug I've always understood graceful degradation in software as being something you achieve via progressive enhancement. I would not consider the degradation of most websites in the absence of javascript to be at all graceful.

@acb I don't like the idea of mixing AAs and AAAs. But with a DC/DC converter you could even achieve constant brightness.

@acb #funfact: A lot of high-availability and scalable architectures implement #GracefulDegradation based upon their #design and #settings...

For example #ZFS / #OpenZFS's #ZRAID or #Ceph as well as as most clustered and/or distributed computing.

@acb can I purchase the described flashlight in the US?

@acb but how does it deal with batteries that gracefully degrade by exuding electrolytes?

@acb

My structural engineering prof called it "graceful failure" as opposed to "catastrophic".

Structural design, for a long time, has emphasized that the horizontal beams, and the floor slabs, must be the first to go.

This usually means the roof above you slumps, perhaps hanging down a third the height of the room, but the vertical members, with higher safety factor, have another earthquake-minute before they go and the whole building pancakes like the WTC.

One vital minute. Don't dawdle.

@acb

Give them the Nobel Prize.

@acb
Back a few decades ago there was a big discussion about fail-safe vs fail-soft (the third, and ever popular, option was fail-catastrophically). Graceful degradation looks like it is an extension of the fail-soft philosophy.

@acb it will probably break on the first software update though

@acb

Graceful degradation >>>> planned obsolescence

(absolutely love MUJI design choices - there are so many little things they do that make their appliances graceful.

I did not know of the torch and now i am further excited)

@acb This is so cool. I think this is a huge innovation in the way we can think about design

@acb pro Of course, web developers would insist on "progressive enhancement", which is the same thing but we treat having no batteries as the normal state and having light as optional