The lighter side of life

Take, for example, the challenge of finding your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, without wishing to wake up your partner. This usually amounts to some frantic waving around of the arms in search of an elusive light switch cord that seems to have re-positioned itself since you went to sleep. Chances are you're more likely to end up trying to switch on your bedmate's ear. Such confusion is bad enough in your own home, but it can be a total nightmare in a strange house or hotel. Then there's the inevitable power cut where you grope around for a torch, candle - or indeed anything - to see where you are going. Short of a serious fall, this may prove a mere irritation for adults. But it can be a real problem for parents, if have a child who's afraid of the dark. Usually somebody manages to trip over the cat/dog/objects left on the floor, just to add to the fun. As for the elderly or disabled, or someone liable to suffer from fits, not being able to find the emergency pull cord in a hurry could have dire consequences. Surely in this age of technical marvels and innovation, somebody could come up with a solution to this age-old, basic problem! The Challenge There are, of course, a number of solutions - some better than others. A passive infra red light switch in the bathroom is the most obvious, but it won't solve the problem of what to do in the event of a power cut. In some countries, power is off for 50% or more of the time. A passive infrared sensor connected to a battery-powered light then? This is possible. However, to avoid the constant need of changing batteries, it is going to need some means whereby it is kept charged at all times. Apart from the problems posed by having to provide a charging point in a bathroom, where anything delivering more power than a shaver socket is not normally allowed, this degree of elaboration is starting to make the while thing elaborate, bulky and expensive. What is required is something fairly simple and cheap. The solution offered below has those very attributes and would seem to do the trick. Oddly enough, no one seems to have thought of this before - and it comes from somebody with a track record of coming up with innovations that make money. For those without access to the web, the solution will be described fully in our January edition. Solution The solution to this month's challenge comes from Steven Capon, who lives in Brighton. Apart from developing a number of consumer products, he has the distinction of surviving the Dragon's Den, which offered him £150,000 for 40% of his 'Binvelope', currently being piloted by Brighton and Hove City Council. This idea he has aptly and wittily called the 'Loominate'. It consists of a small LED torch with a passive infra red sensor that replaces the pull weight on the end of a bathroom pull cord. He told Eureka at the recent British Invention Show how exactly he came up with the idea. "I have to get on the Internet early in the morning to get in touch with my business partner in China" he explained. However, the brightness of the bathroom light, the noise of the switch and the bathroom fan coming on all served to wake his partner. By contrast, the Loominate, powered by four AAA batteries, lights up four LEDs when it detects somebody in the room. It can then either be used as the source of light in the bathroom or allow the main light to be turned on by pulling it, whereupon the LEDs go out, saving battery life. "It's not just a pull cord light," points out Capon, "it's an emergency light. Everybody knows where the bathroom is. There's a quick release and you can use it as a torch." And, attached to an emergency pull cord in a house equipped for the elderly or disabled, it could even save a life.