The name was based on something 1) easy to say in most languages 2) I could get the domain for and is short and 3) wasn’t trademarked.

When you use your phone you are announcing that you’re going to do something embarrassing. Loodio always plays no matter the intention of the visit.

I posted here some years ago trying to raise money for a Kickstarter for a product I call Loodio.

Loodio is a motion activated music player for bathrooms that plays music during the bathroom visit to give users privacy during their sacred moments.

The kickstarter failed, but I managed to create a product eventually with a lot of effort.

I managed to sell 150 units of the first unit, mostly to United States but to all different parts of the world while working on the next version.

The problem with the first version was that it was running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W (that had to be wall connected) and it was pretty big, had crappy sound and took a minute to start since it had to boot a whole linux system. I was running it on a python script and unix services. To add music, people had to SSH into the unit so you can imagine how painful that was for some.

However customers loved it! But I knew I could do better. The most common request was battery operation.

Here are some reviews of version 1: https://loodio.com/pages/reviews

I'm proud to say that Loodio 2 is finally here and is working like I imagined when I started working on it almost 5 years ago now.

Loodio 2 introduces battery operation with 1 week of battery life (~5 hours of active operation). It has great sound and an easy way to add your own music with SD card support (4GB included).

It doesn't require any app. Can be run without WiFi (however you lose some features like internet radio, time updates, software updates and weather)

Why does it have a display, you may ask? Because, I used to have an electric toothbrush that came with a display. That display showed how long you were brushing to make sure you did your 2 minutes per brush. When I wasn't brushing my teeth, it showed the current time. And I stopped using the electric tooth brush (because a dentist told me they are too harsh on your teeth) but kept the display for probably 5 years afterwards because I noticed I really want to know the time while getting ready for school/work in the morning. Another thing I noticed was that I always check the weather outside, so I could dress appropriately.

So, Loodio shows you the time and weather (optionally) as well as playing music during your visit. These features together with the lights, are features that I think people don't expect to use but with time becomes as important as the music. Customer interviews verify this.

I wasted a lot of money trying to outsource the development the first 18 months. I then decided to start doing it myself. The version I'm selling is actually the 25th(!) iteration of the product. The problem with hardware is that it takes you around a month to iterate a circuit (if you don't live next to the factory in Shenzhen) because of the cycle 'Designing->Order from China->Testing->Repeat'. And I had no experience of electronics when starting out.

The enclosure is made from empty PCBs to save money for injection tooling later. It looks pretty cool. But mainly, works great!

I want to give credit to Tadeusz Karpinski and Velimir Stoleski that ported my crappy python script to the ESP32 that is running Loodio 2.

You need to try it! I really think you're gonna like it! https://loodio.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44116298

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I bicycle everyday, a few gym sessions a week and smoke half a pack every weekend or so.