Smart urinals stuck on boot at a gas station in Germany

https://reddit.com/r/PBSOD/comments/1244p9k/smart_urinals_stuck_on_boot_at_a_gas_station_in/

57 112 3 years ago

TonyTrapp• 3 years ago

As some of the comments in the reddit thread indicate, this is a common sight and these displays are only there to show ads. The urinal itself is as dumb as it can be.

prepend• 3 years ago

Seeing this would make me doubt the ability of the management. Although I suppose gas stations are just locally minmaxing for any extra nickel.

It seems odd that the minimal ad revenue would pay for the electricity. Maybe it’s a situation where the power cost is externalized to the decision so they see “$4 extra per month” without being able to itemize and track the extra $5 in power.

mschuster912• 3 years ago

These things are usually something extremely low powered like Raspberry Pis or Android tablets with a kiosk-mode app. That's like 20€ a year in power, but advertisement income can be far higher (the customers literally can't pee without watching the ads) - and as gas stations are barely profitable on gas and concession sales are falling everywhere because of rampant inflation, they look for every opportunity they can use to make some money.

The core problem is, as so often these days, that decades of unchecked capitalism have "optimized away" resilience on all levels: first, too much competition led to gas stations depending on concession sales (while oil companies make ever more insane profits), and now gas stations depend on nickeling-and-diming customers for shit that used to be free (by exposing them to ads wherever they can, some places have gated their vacuums and air pressers behind payment, and good luck finding a free loo). It's going to be a real shitshow when the ad companies shut down as the advertisers are cutting back on budget.

dmix• 3 years ago

Better regulate gas stations otherwise they might end up buying into some failed cross promotional scheme putting ads in bathrooms. The horror.

misterben• 3 years ago

Android P

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

Treating your customers as ad-holes is ultimately pound foolish.

Speaking of pissing on your customers, I tried to create an FB account recently (thinking that the software I sell ought to have a FB presence). Immediately I received an email from FB accusing me of lying when setting up the account — requiring me to now submit my (mobile) phone number in order to begin the process of resolving the issue.

Yeah, no. Bye, FB.

bluGill6• 3 years ago

FB has a large scam problem they are trying to get on top of. while I understand you not wanting to give them your number, I also understand their wish to verify you are a real person and not another automated scam.

PreInternet01• 3 years ago

There's nothing particularly smart about these urinals: the screens are meant to show ads, but usually only show reminders (accompanied by a godawful jingle) about how you can use part of the EUR 0.50 you just spent on entry towards a purchase in the adjacent shop.

(These setups showed up all over Europe years ago, with gas stations outsourcing their toilet facilities to companies taking care of cleaning and maintenance. Payment is collected on entry, which gives the customer a ticket, which entitles them to 30-cent-or-so discount on coffee or whatever. Advertising is supposed to make this all work. It does not seem to have been a very successful model, with many facilities being in a state of disrepair as shown in these pictures)

noduerme• 3 years ago

it's really weird... I moved from America to the EU, and found myself in a tiny village in France, where my nearest neighbor was a trucker. They seem to have the same mentality all over the world.

9dev• 3 years ago

I'm inclined to agree, but what mentality are you referring to in particular?

pigsty• 3 years ago

Whenever people call out Europe for having paid toilets, commenters always show up to say they’re glad toilets aren’t free because they’d be so filthy otherwise.

I’m glad you nipped that in the bud. Euro paid toilets have always been outright disgusting and not once better than the free toilets found literally anywhere else in the semi-developed world in my experience. I’ll take a free SE Asian toilet over a paid French toilet any day of the week.

Nice thing about ads in toilets is frustrated users will be very creative in showing their lack of satisfaction with commercials blasting while they piss.

gonzo41• 3 years ago

Apart from SF, where there's literally a human shit map because there's no public toilets.

calvinmorrison• 3 years ago

The best place for bathrooms: Wegmans. Always the pleasant experience.

mrunkel• 3 years ago

Euro paid toilets have always been outright disgusting and not once better than the free toilets found literally anywhere else in the semi-developed world in my experience.

No idea where you're using toilets, but I've been all over Europe and have yet to see a disgusting toilet.

mr_mitm3• 3 years ago

In Germany, there are free restrooms on autobahn parking lots (essentially truck stops without a gas station or shops or anything, just the restroom) and these paid restrooms. The paid ones are objectively miles ahead in terms of cleanliness.

(Every once in a while you also see free restrooms where the cleaning person asks for a tip.)

Symbiote3• 3 years ago

Can we avoid sweeping generalizations over a continent of 50 countries?

It's essentially flamebait, since it's highly unlikely to apply to all of them, so you just trigger counter-anecdotes.

Complain about French rest area toilets if you like, and praise Vietnamese railway station toilets. Those would seem more reasonable scopes.

fendy3002• 3 years ago

Watch ads for 30 seconds to flush or activate 4.99€ monthly subscription to flush anytime

rob74• 3 years ago

The problem is that you don't have to care about whether you flush or not - that's the problem of the guy using the urinal after you...

mr_mitm3• 3 years ago

At the risk of ruining the joke: these Sanifair urinals don't really flush. They are advertised as some sort of self-cleaning chemical solution.

mr_mitm3• 3 years ago

They recently changed the payment model, at least in some locations. It's now 1 EUR for using the restroom, but you also get a 1 EUR voucher for food and drinks.

bombcar4• 3 years ago

This is one of the ways to go about it; roughly similar to the "ask for the key at the counter" you sometimes see in the USA (though that is often to keep drug users out of the bathroom with more or less success).

_doom_• 3 years ago

r/itrunsdoom ?

fernandohur• 3 years ago

It was probably just a shitty release

ClumsyPilot• 3 years ago

Internet of piss. Just wait untill they start selling dick enlargement pills.

At some point all the home toilets will be smart, there wil be a bug and they will fail to boot. Without booting they will not flush.

Thus London will have another Great Stench

On a more srious note, ford recently patented 'our car will drive off if you fall behind on payments".

We have to get the IoT stuff under control, and the law will not be changed untill something terrible happens. Maybe a ford car drives off with a newborn or causes multiple deaths.

idontwantthis2• 3 years ago

Just wait until they start selling dick enlargement pills.

It still takes a quarter and a twist, but have you never bought horny goat weed at a truck stop?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimedium?wprov=sfti1

ignoramous• 3 years ago

From reddit comments, it seems like these are ad-supported public urinals. Nothing inherently smart about the display, unless its...

jonahbenton• 3 years ago

Fix that ChatGPT

d00mer• 3 years ago

I think I'm not going too far when I claim that such inventions are utterly over-engineered for no good reason.

I had a chance to visit Google's Mountain View office a few years ago, where they had these modern toilets that were supposed to "wipe your ass for you" by spraying water at your asshole or something similar. Never got to even try that feature as I took a pretty properly sized dump and jammed the system somehow.

Unfortunately, there was no plunger at hand to unclog it, neither was there a flush button as everything was automatic. I spent 10 minutes trying fix the situtation, but had to run into a meeting eventually, so I left the big pile of shit for the next person to handle.

Next day, I tried again using a different box in the toilet. Unrelated: the toilet walls and door had like 70cm of space underneath where you could almost see the junk hanging from the person sitting next to you. Very unpleasant. Anyways, the goddamn toilet did not work again. This time I had no meeting and eventually I was able to flush the shit down, but it took like 15 minutes.

I wonder if they still have those toilets, but this was possibly one of the worst toilet-going experiences in my life. I felt like I was unwillingly participating in some sick experiment set up by some psycho.

Y_Y• 3 years ago

Sounds like you wandered into the search department by accident

afhammad• 3 years ago

413 Payload Too Large

josefx• 3 years ago

As long as it is not the teapot.

pertique• 3 years ago

While I've never used Google's toilets, cleaning your asshole using a water spray is usually accomplished by a bidet. They're somewhat common in toilets in parts of Europe, and quite common in Japan. It's preference, but people usually like them.

That being said, if the toilet component sucked then the whole experience will suck. I just wouldn't discount ass-spraying toilets from one bad toilet.

EDIT: Almost all the toilets with bidets I've used have also had manual flush options, although the UX is hit or miss.

buro9• 3 years ago

I was never convinced on bidets as in the UK virtually no-one has them.

But then I heard the line (from a Frenchman) "If you got shit on your fingers would you wipe it off with a piece of tissue, or wash your hands? Why would the answer be different for your bum?".

On reflection, why aren't they everywhere?

th15row• 3 years ago

I'm used to bidets (separate from the toilet) being present in every bathroom, so it's strange to me how some people are completely unaware of the concept.

zelphirkalt• 3 years ago

Maybe shit is not worthless. Maybe we can mine some data outta that. We need to be smart about it though.

I am skeptical, whether spraying water at the butt is a good idea. What about the additional aerosols that creates? And if the spraying does not have the water pressure, you might end up with a dirty and wet butt, instead of only a dirty butt.

I also dislike toilets, which when you dump, allow water to splash up at you. I don't think that water is necessarily very clean.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Bidets are quite nice when you get used to them

danjac• 3 years ago

supposed to "wipe your ass for you" by spraying water at your asshole

Presumably the tech is called Google Wave?

MrBuddyCasino2• 3 years ago

Unrelated: the toilet walls and door had like 70cm of space underneath where you could almost see the junk hanging from the person sitting next to you. Very unpleasant.

Why are american toilets like that? As a european, it seems barbarian.

0_____02• 3 years ago

Cost and precedent. It's inexpensive to get a prefab kit that only needs to be bolted to a couple spots on the floor and wall, less finicky than building a partition all the way to the floor.

Also USians are used to it, so we don't complain :)

looping__lui• 3 years ago

Oh, you absolutely miss the point of these toilets: they show you digital Ads while you are “at the business”. I guess thats a pretty neat revenue stream… To make matters even weirder: you are charged 1 EUR or so for most of these Urinals and then you have to watch advertisements in addition.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 3 years ago

Are you Scandinavian by chance? My Scandinavian colleagues were always completely mortified at the massive gaps we have in American stalls. The rooms Scandinavians get are complete utopias in comparison

Macha• 3 years ago

It's not just Scandanavia, most European countries have, if not full on doors on their cubicles, non-visible vertical gaps and horizontal gaps of at most 5cm (2in). You might occasionally see a pub or shelter with US style door gaps to discourage drug use, but very much the minority.

loveparade• 3 years ago

It's fine, Google killed that product a while ago. You probably got caught in the middle of the shutdown.

mrighele• 3 years ago

What is interesting is that you don't need absolutely any technology to have a toilet that cleans your ass with water. It's really just a pipe that comes out from below the seat and a knob to manually open/close the water, it's even simpler than the flush.

bluGill6• 3 years ago

You need water pipes from your water source to the toilet. That technology is a lot more complex than you give it credit for. Most likely there is an electric pump someplace in the chain, which adds in a lot more technology. (There is also water treatment, but since we are not talking about drinking water I will ignore that)

fullstop4• 3 years ago

Look, if I'm going to blast my ass with water it had better be at least luke-warm.

DrThunder11• 3 years ago

Not sure about the other features of these Google toilets but a bidet is absolutely something everyone should have. You can buy a cheap one from Amazon that hooks on to your existing toilet. Sooooo much better actually cleaning your ass instead of smearing shit around with your tp and getting tp bits stuck in your crack.

I'll never go back to pure tp after having a bidet.

rationalist• 3 years ago

I have a bidet, but I think the main problem is most people don't know how to use a toilet properly.

If you spread your cheeks apart before sitting down, there is a lot less surface you have to wipe.

If you lean forward when you go (rest elbows on thighs), you're in the anatomically correct position (the Squatty Potty's selling point).

Wipe any sweat/hairs off the seat after you get up before you flush, and close the lid (or lift the seat if there is no lid) before you flush to avoid spraying dirty water on the seat.

Having a somewhat decent diet (mine isn't great, but it's still good enough) helps a lot too: turds will have form rather than just be like a paste, requiring just one wipe to make sure things are clean.

I doubt 99% of parents teach that (and they probably don't even practice that themselves). And most people aren't going even consider optimizing their toilet routine or care about the person using the toilet after them.

zrail• 3 years ago

You need more fiber in your diet if you're dumping toilet cloggers every day, my guy.

inportb• 3 years ago

You need Google Fiber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re0VRK6ouwI

fnord77• 3 years ago

the point is to show ads

sandworm101• 3 years ago

I am reminded of a recent BBC article: "Man killed by telescoping urinal." That is some scifi horror imho. And it happened in front of a theatre showing the Harry Potter play, suggesting dark arts at work. Then I learned about what these objects actualy do.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-64439322

dna_polymerase• 3 years ago

This must be the most hilarious comment I've ever read on here, and everyone is discussing this without even flinching… :D

userbinator• 3 years ago

I suspect they were "low flush", which means exactly what it says. They're supposed to save water, but only if one flush is enough.

fullstop4• 3 years ago

I don't have a bidet, but I'm seriously considering getting one as it's a much cleaner option. I wouldn't clean peanut butter off of my hands with a tissue and consider it clean.

My kids used to get scared by the toilets which automatically flushed because their bodies were small and it was easy to be missed by the sensor and it would flush while they were still sitting on it. It's older technology, sure, but it's solving the problem of people not flushing toilets while introducing new problems.

I was once in the Microsoft building in NYC and used the toilet when the person in the stall next to me quickly fled the room and I saw water starting to run under the toilet wall (which was maybe 20cm from the floor). I had to quickly finish my business and tell the person working the desk that I had gone to use the bathroom and saw that a toilet was overflowing. I guess what I'm getting at here is that either all of the tech giants have toilet problems or you need more fiber in your diet.

tagyro• 3 years ago

These are (most probably) Sanifair toilets. Sanifair is part of Tank & Rast, a monopoly that owns all (ok, not all, only something like 98%) of the locations for gas stations on the German highways.

Fun company </s>

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_%26_Rast#Kritik

ushakov• 3 years ago

I remember seeing their toilets at Bremen Railway Station.

Never paid a cent in my life for the “privilege”

mellosouls• 3 years ago

For ads encouraging you to spend a penny.

liendolucas• 3 years ago

Ah, but is not only that kind of stupidity. To this day you can go outside to have a drink or a meal and you will be forced to order using your smartphone. Scan the fucking QR code, go to website and input the order, despite verbally and physically telling the waitress what I want without even looking at the menu.

causality0• 3 years ago

used exclusively to show ads to captive audience

Unless they've also got security cameras in the bathroom I'd expect those screens to get smashed pretty quickly.

gadders• 3 years ago

I did see some urinals in a pub in London once that had a game attached. It's been a few years ago now and tbh I was pissed (UK sense) but I think by aiming your flow in one direction or the other you could either save a football (UK sense) goal or score one.

Smart urinals stuck on boot at a gas station in Germany

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