These sellers claim things about the product which simply aren’t true. It is just a child’s toy and only worth about $5, nothing more. I have bought and tested them.
To compare the above prices of between $25 to $45 to the quality products from your local Bunnings/Home Depot is the first sign that all is not well with what these scammers are offering:
What these devices should cost from a wholesale seller
This institutes charter is about providing a service to the general public around electronic product claims and whether these are distorting the truth or not.
We simply buy goods, test them and then express our opinions (based on our experience) of whether they are either worse then their claims, match their stated claims or exceed these.
These reviews provides a level of protection to the consumer.
We reserve the right to only review technologies that are of interest to us as we have a limited membership and thus limited resources to review products. We are however orientated towards rooting our unethical electronic product ‘dropshippers’.
You definitely pay for what you get with automation. I bought a 3-in-1 mop/vacuum/broom which was supposed to be all of that and have LIDAR and be able to self-dock and recharge. Well the fellas at:
These folks are in the business of scamming people and caught me out. You will see the video on their site which advertises their product as having all these features and yet it has Velcro tags on the bottom to which very thin soft cloths are attached and these are then dragged across the floor. It came with about 30 of these replacement cloths. It does have a piezoelectric sensor in its “nose” that detects it bumping into something and then has a randomising algorithm which causes it to change direction, quite successfully. This algorithm and owing to its small dimensions, allows it to get-in under tables and chairs and cabinets and attracts “dust bunnies” to that cloth. A human would need to get down on all fours with a conventional vacuum machine and a fine nozzle to reach those places.
The concept is worth about $AUD 5-$10 and I would pay that for it, provided it didn’t get it self struck on anything that doesn’t activate the sensor. That would be things less than, 5mm in height. It even gets itself caught out in grouting grooves on tiles when there is a lot of water on the bathroom floor. The fellows at keithlily (whom I later discovered our out of Azerbaijan, have a great marketing and delivery businesses model but just aren’t honest with their product). They will no doubt, not be a sustainable organization. They will constantly have to change their cover to keep duping people like me by over promising whilst also under delivering.
It did however get me thinking about what is now know as general purpose technology (GPT) and the specific version of this that is robotics. ABB have incredible robots that can do amazing things in a production line, even allowing for full customisation of each product manufactured. Boston Dynamics have created robots, with a level of realism, that defies what many thought possible just a few years ago. There are also amazing autonomous vehicles like the various Tesla models and the list goes on. On an affordability scale though, only the flight controller is at a scale of sophistication and cost that can be considered GPT, that is the flight controllers in drones. In pondering why that is, I realised that the more expensive automatic vacuum machines are only slightly better than my $USD 29.95 excluding shipping, light-touch, kiddies toy “robotic” broom. We had one from Roomba back in 2012 costing $AUD 350 and it kept getting itself stuck. I have no doubt that these have improved substantially since then, but still think that the performance versus price is still not compelling. This design needs a rethink. The flight controllers in drones are however GPT and have the right price versus performance proposition as I explain in the video below:
So this got me thinking that with me knowledge and experience I could evaluate technologies (ostensibly items that aren’t branded and are sold in online states). This is thus a public service to help protect scammers. I call this service: “The workbench critic”. I will start with these 3-in-1 robotic cleaners.
So along this theme I came across this post and thought it very humourous:
I think that we don’t always realise the impact that General Purpose Technologies (GPT) have had in our lives.
My definition of GPT is when things become so widespread that we see their applications all around us then they are General Purpose Technologies. In addition, my other criteria is when the economies of scale have brought their prices down to such an extent that these technologies become ubiquitous.
The following picture describes four such GPTs, can you guess what that are?
Four GPTs that are ubiquitous..
So these are: solar panels, lithium batteries, passive infrared sensors and light emitting diode (LED) lights.
Their combined use, in this particular application, means that this could be installed by anybody as it is completely safe – a low voltage system. Thus no expensive electrician required to do the installation, no 230V(EU/AUS)/120V(US) cabling and no certificate of compliance (CoC) from that same expensive electrician. The older halogen mains connected system would cost hundreds of dollars to buy all the components and get the licensed electrician to do the installation and then certify it as safe! The system shown here would cost less than $50 from a local hardware store and you could install it in less than 10 minutes without running foul of the electrical codes. The bonus of course is that it will still work during a power failure owing to the battery which is charged by the solar photo-voltaic panel so completely sustainable and renewable…
I love LEDs because their power consumption is very low and they are so safe, most of the individual units run on anything from 1.5V to 5V. We all love light and color which LEDs are exceptionally good at producing.
I was astonished how cheap these have become, these tealights would replace the dangerous open flame, candle-based units and last for many years. They also create a lovely ambience no matter what the occasion, even the occasional power failure (outage). These cost me less than 50 cents each within this 8 pack and even included the CR2032 batteries, viola! Date-night at home is going to be soo romantic due to this GPT :,-) Thanks to the engineer whom invented LEDs…
LED tealight “candle”set, all 8 for $3.90, a truly ubiquitous technology.
Thanks to Messrs Round (1907), Losev (1927), Biard (1961) and Holonyak (1962) and those that secured to increase their lumens output whilst driving their costs down. Thanks to engineers in companies like Toshiba etc we get amazing, commercially available LEDs, that have an efficiency of up to 223 lumens/watt.
The control of LEDs has also advanced and by mixing the intensity of red, green and blue, any color can be obtained from these three colour LED devices. Check out this rather inexpensive “Disco ball” which listens to the music and then responds with a fantastic display of color light.
Awesome “Disco Ball” using controlled LEDs
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