Power crazy

We depend on electricity to drive our busy lifestyles. There’s hardly an activity we engage in that doesn’t use electricity – either mains or battery.

But what happens when the power supply stops. Not just a major power-out when a storm blows down a pylon but the not-uncommon 5 or 10 second blip?

1. My oven, set to turn on to have my dinner cooked and ready when I come in, loses its programming and the clock time and I have beans on toast.
2. My mother’s telephone talks to her (in an American accent) to tell her there’s been a power outage. She then calls me to tell me a lady called on the phone but she couldn’t understand what she was saying.
3. Mum has an air-filled mattress which is supposed to continually change the pressure during the night. Yup – when the power blips it sounds an alarm – Mum rings me … I get no sleep.
4. The security lights all go crazy (each one has a different protocol so some come on and stay on and on others the PIR stops working)
5. All the security alarms in the neighbourhood start wailing.

With so much computing and control intelligence on tiny and cheap chips that don’t use much power and battery technology improving all the time why can’t these devices be more clever. When the mains power cuts out why can’t they switch to battery mode and monitor the situation and when the power comes back on put up a nice message on a cheap little screen? No unnecessary interruptions, no cold dinners when there’s just a short break in power. I guess there would need to be an option for some kind of audible signal for people who can’t see very well.

We really need some intelligence in the design of everyday equipment and their user interfaces. It could make life so much calmer.