I almost killed my wife - don't kill yours!
A short update on my lights toggle and an easy fix to not kill anyone.
In my last post I described how I use a toggle helper to toggle two lights together, even if they start with one on and the other off. If you read the post, you’ll recall one light is at the bottom of the stairs and the other at the top, and I have an automatic timer that switches them off after a few minutes. A simple set up you’d think, what could possibly go wrong? How could this almost kill my wife?
Well, although I’d tested the setup carefully, I’d really only tested the technical aspects, I hadn’t really thought through all the use cases and one has potentially dangerous consequences. This was realised and tested by my wife, who gave me an earful when it failed! So what is this use case?
Where’s the danger?
You may already have realised the issue but, if not, it’s obvious when you think about it. The timer switches off both lights simultaneously and this is the danger. My wife had been upstairs for a few minutes and, when she was on the stairs coming down, the timer expired and she was plunged into darkness! Whoops!
Fortunately she didn’t crash to the hall and survived to, quite rightly, give me an earful!
But how could I resolve this without disabling the timer?
My solution
After giving it some thought, I realised that the simplest solution is to stagger how the lights are switched off. Now I have two timers and the upstairs light switches off a minute before the downstairs light. The downstairs light casts enough light on the stairs so that, even if the upstairs light goes out while someone is on the stairs, they can still see well enough to get to the bottom safely.
If you have any other ideas that would be better, I’d be keen to hear them.