
Wasabi Fire Alarm Alerts the Deaf with the Power of Scent - rbanffy
http://inventorspot.com/articles/wasabi_silent_fire_alarm_alerts__11514
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i_am_nomad
This has been used for a long, long time in mines, where communication can be
very difficult. If there's a danger, e.g. gas buildup, trace amounts of
mercaptan are added to the ventilation system. Miners smelling that awful
rotten scent know to retreat to the nearest shelter area in the mine. To
signal an all-clear, they replace mercaptan with wintergreen.

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scj
My great-grandmother was deaf (since she was 10), and she knew if someone
arrived after she went to bed (she was a farmer for much of her life, so she
slept early).

How did she do it? Vibration. She could detect movement throughout the house.
My great-uncle has a pretty good story of trying to sneak out/in after curfew.

So attach a motor connected to a smoke detector to the baseboard of a bed. For
safety's sake, you'd use a pretty big motor. You'd also want to test it
randomly.

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robalfonso
They already make deaf alarm clocks for this. I actually use to use one for
overnight alerts because I'm a heavy sleeper and I don't want to wake up my
wife with my phone sounds.

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okreallywtf
This was one of the things I liked about my fitbit, the vibrate alarm was
_more than enough_ for me since I'm a super light sleeper, and I can get woken
up without waking up my gf. In fact, _her_ fitbit vibrate would wake me up but
not her but she's the one wearing it.

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microtherion
Works pretty well on Apple Watch as well.

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Slackwise
I was gonna' ask why not just make it smell like strong smoke as to not
confuse your instincts, but the key here is that it _wakes_ people, not just
notifies them.

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jdavis703
Doesn't smoke also wake people? One of my roommates once tried to burn my door
down. The yelling and screaming prior to that didn't wake me up (I thought it
was just part of a dream, I guess it was a REM sleep cycle), but the coughing
from the smoke eventually got me out of my slumber. I'm pretty sure the body
has a built-in smoke detector.

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pscarey
I think you seriously underestimate the threat of a real fire - a mistake
which a lot of people (rather sadly) make. People die in house fires because
the do not wake up in time to get out - the place goes up pretty quickly, and
smoke (+ poisonous gases) incapacitate and suffocate people before they even
have a chance.

Many resources in this area, but as a starting point:
[https://www.ready.gov/home-fires](https://www.ready.gov/home-fires)

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excalibur
This is undated, but contains a video from 2010, an update from 2011, and a
comment from 2008.

I feel like if this product were going to make it big it would have done so by
now.

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wyldfire
I would guess that the hearing impaired marketplace is small enough that if it
had made it big I might never know. Maybe it did make it big.

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zie
Or you know, what has always happened in the past, and seems to work just
fine.. super bright flashing light. Every school/govt building I've ever been
that has fire alarms has these installed.

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inetknght
I don't know about you, but if your eyes are closed and your covers are pulled
over your face (like me when I sleep), there's a good chance you're not going
to see the flashing light. If you're deaf, there's a good chance you won't
hear it either.

But you still breathe. You can still smell.

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koolba
> But you still breathe. You can still smell.

Not if you have a cold.

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inetknght
True, but arguably the same can be said if you've got an ear infection or
recovering from eye surgery or something; your respective senses aren't at
full capacity then either.

I know that, in my experience, pungent smells have an interesting way of
making it through some of the sickest olfactory sense.

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NikolaeVarius
The Fire Alarms I've experienced also are so damn loud and screeching I can
physically feel the sound waves. I would be amazed if Deaf people couldn't
feel the vibrations. Also, would they still be able to feel their ear drums
vibrating?

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function_seven
> _Also, would they still be able to feel their ear drums vibrating?_

I imagine that being deaf is what prevents this.

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NikolaeVarius
Your ear drums are not the specific part of your ear that translates vibration
into brain signals.

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function_seven
I'm aware. Being deaf is the condition of not perceiving those signals,
wherever that fault lies.

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pbiggar
Slight tangent here, but SV tech often gets criticized for building shit that
people don't need (Juicero is a good recent example, but people said it about
the iphone when it came out).

The upside of all that ridiculous tech for 22 year old dudes with too much
money, is that it brings down the cost to manufacture valuable stuff like
this, start hardware startups with good causes, etc. I know this is in a
research lab, but there was a similar sonar-for-deaf-people one recently.

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icebraining
I find it hard to believe that a few nonsensical hardware startups are
responsible for lowering prices. The production sizes are just too small to
have an effect on China's massive output.

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PeterisP
That's kind of the whole point - the big manufacturers affect only the
upstream providers of various _scaling_ technology, tools, components and
manufacturing systems suitable for mass production of very large batches; but
the startup&maker ecosystem creates a market for a _different_ kind of tools,
vendors and components - ones that are useful for prototyping and building
cost efficient _small_ batch products.

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oldgun
For deaf people? How about using light?

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tetraodonpuffer
if the fire alarm is in a different room light would not work very well, with
a strong enough smell no matter where you are in your dwelling you are going
to notice it...

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mparr4
I don't see how smell wouldn't suffer from the same issue as light.

If you're in another room (behind a closed door, for example) I can't imagine
it's tremendously effective

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FLUX-YOU
I'd hook the smell-alarm up to the ventilation system, and wire it to turn all
of the ventilation fans on if the alarm needs to go off.

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adrianmonk
Isn't that going to spread smoke around and make the fire more dangerous? It
would be better to just have smell emitters in every room.

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mfoy_
I hope after waking them it doesn't linger too long or with too much
potency... imagine "too much wasabi" in the air as you're trying to get ready
to leave your dwelling.... your scalp just prickling constantly and your eyes
and nose watering...

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k_sh
Yeah, but the alternative is burning to death, so some side effects are OK
with me.

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tudorw
This could be great for children, they are often capable of sleeping through
alarms, also given the sense of smell has the lowest 'latency' to the brain
out of all our senses it would seem worth investigating, I'd been thinking of
experimenting on my daughter, she narrowly missed out on an early alarm call
concocted of rotten eggs...

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kreeWall
The title of this post should probably be renamed to reflect that its from
2009 or 2010.

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phreeza
Deaf people must have alarm clocks of some sort, why not piggyback off those?

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LeoPanthera
I'm not deaf but I do routinely sleep wearing ear plugs. I currently use an
Apple Watch as an alarm - it vibrates while the alarm is going off.

Before that I used to wear a Casio watch with the same vibrating alarm
feature.

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DigitalJack
When do you charge your watch?

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geodel
And here is when scent is not powerful enough.

www.huffingtonpost.in/2017/07/27/smelly-bombs-imported-from-israel-are-not-
stinky-enough-to-wor_a_23050273/

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amingilani
Stupid question but wouldn't they smell the smoke the same time as they smell
the wasabi

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DanBC
The smell emitter doesn't need to be in the same place as the smoke detector.

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zymhan
Why in god's name did they take blurry pixelated screenshots from a video as
their only photos?

