Show HN: Loodio 2 – A Simple Rechargable Bathroom Privacy Device
94 comments
·May 28, 2025bredren
I think the tenacity to deliver a product is great and hope that you get good feedback here. Congratulations on shipping a second version.
I had thought that noise machines were primarily for people who would be listening. For example, therapists put white noise machines in the waiting area, not where the session is occuring.
So, this sound provides the sense of privacy but would be better set up outside the bathroom to those who might hear, uh, human sounds inside.
pierrec
You and other commenters make it sound obvious, but I'd say the ideal location of the cover-up noise is actually a tricky question. Our brains are exceedingly good at separating different sound sources, but a bathroom is a textbook example of a space that gives a shared acoustic profile to all the sounds within, causing them to be grouped together in our minds, and possibly identified as a single source.
As a thought experiment, imagine that the Loodio is actually playing loud farting/plopping noises. In that case, placing it outside the bathroom would make it easy to distinguish between the "real" and the "fake" noises: the real ones have the bathroom acoustics. Placing it inside would make it impossible to discern.
Now imagine that the Loodio is playing dubstep, which is barely a step removed from "loud farting/plopping noises". What is the ideal location now?
hgomersall
Yeah, there's an interesting effect of people in the shower being unable to hear those outside but those outside can hear those in the shower very well. It's fairly obvious when thought about that the relative amplitude of the noise source is much higher for the person stood next to it than further away.
nmstoker
>> Does it run on batteries?
>> Yes!
>> Every Loodio sold after 2025 runs on batteries.
Interesting but rather than wait for 2026, what about the ones sold now? ; - )
Might want to reword it to be something like "Every Loodio sold from 2025 onwards runs on batteries."
And on a more substantial point: isn't Loo primarily a British term? I'd be surprised if it's well understood in most other countries whereas toilet (vulgar as it sounds to certain Brits) is fairly widely understood. Maybe this isn't a big deal but you'd think the name was kind of crucial to getting the purpose of this gadget.
testmasterflex
Will look into that.
The name was based on something 1) easy to say in most languages 2) I could get the domain for and is short and 3) wasn’t trademarked.
mschuster91
> And on a more substantial point: isn't Loo primarily a British term? I'd be surprised if it's well understood in most other countries whereas toilet (vulgar as it sounds to certain Brits) is fairly widely understood
Well... it's crucial for the portmanteau to work ;)
vipa123
Shitterdio doesn't have the same ring :)
dmd
Oh wow I (American) didn't even remember until seeing this thread that loo meant that.
raphinou
Having built a similar device, it appears that to give privacy to the person inside the bathroom, it is much better to have the music play outside. With music playing near to the "listener", the sounds coming from inside the room are much better covered.
Congrats for the realisation nevertheless!
pdntspa
How much privacy does this really give? You're still announcing to the world, 'hey everyone I am taking a shit!' because the music is only playing when someone's in the bathroom. It seems like you'd want music constantly playing outside the bathroom if you want to actual privacy.
999900000999
Feels like a really really weird device.
Even when I live with others, we aren't worried about bathroom noise.
I guess if you have a habit of talking to yourself while using the bathroom or showering and need to drown it out this is cool.
However, I'd love this as a general device. I get home and it auto plays music , etc
tonyarkles
> Even when I live with others, we aren't worried about bathroom noise.
I think there's a specific target customer that would love this. I'm in the same camp you are... I couldn't care less. When it's just my wife and I at home it's pretty rare that we close the door even.
In university though I had a roommate who was absolutely paranoid about people hearing her in the bathroom. She would generally run the faucet the whole time she was in there to mask the sounds. Sometimes... I think she'd even run the shower; I don't know this for sure, but I'd hear the shower running in the bathroom for a while and she'd come out looking just as un-showered as she had when she went in.
mathgeek
> However, I'd love this as a general device. I get home and it auto plays music , etc
You can do this with most home automation systems today.
null
stronglikedan
You know darn well you aren't the target market for this device, and you know darn well that there is a target market for it as well as why it exists, so you're being disingenuous when you propose talking to oneself as the only possible reason for it.
theonething
Can you imagine that there might be people who are different from you in this respect?
999900000999
This device has potential to sell millions, it's just going to have a bunch of really weird use cases.
As a seller it's none of your business what end users do with your device as long as it's not a safety hazard.
mmonihan
Can it default to flight of the valkyries?
testmasterflex
Yes. You could technically hide the unit (not sensor) and play scary sounds from it too during Halloween.
abletonlive
Besides running on battery and ecosystem woes, why this over a apple homepod which is cheaper and has better engineering and sound?
initially i was thinking this was some groundbreaking technology that would somehow help with privacy via fancy audio engineering - but alas it seems like just a portable speaker with a cute design.
anyway, congrats on the launch of V2 - it's valid if it's a passion project and you had fun building it in any case, just curious about why anybody would choose this over the plethora of other portable speakers
is the killer feature here motion detection ? because that seems like it can also be accomplished via a third party motion sensor + Apple Home integration
Yabood
Exactly. I used HomePods to solve this problem. Hey Siri, play my x playlist. Hey siri, stop.
testmasterflex
Right. The problem is that you are announcing you’re about to do something embarrassing. Loodio always plays no matter intention and is easily paused with one button click.
abletonlive
this again can be done w/ a cheap sensor that integrates with apple home integration and still come under cost of this product - likely with both superior sensor and speakers
dmje
I love, love, love that you shipped. It looks great and I'm tempted purely to support you and see what it's like.
But I gotta ask: how much **** noise are you lot making in the toilet? What on earth are you all doing in there...!?
testmasterflex
I may look Swedish but my intestinal tract was inherited from my Middle Eastern father. lol.
dmje
Add to basket purely on the basis of that reply :-)
jnsie
Living in a tiny urban apartment, this is a problem I am interested in a solution for. However, I always read that such solutions might block the noise for the toilet-user, but not for those outside of the toilet. I'm curious as to the efficacy of a white noise machine versus this device and, specifically, if either is really effective. It's an interesting solution, OP, an I commend you for your efforts - but I fear $150 is going to be a difficult sell.
wintermutestwin
Pretty easy to test with a phone running mynoise set to white noise.
Barbing
I’ve heard the same. I expected the product to be a speaker to mount on the top of the door to play music on both sides of it, or something.
wellthisisgreat
Enters the bathroom.
The speaker starts blasting “Eye of the Tiger” into the foyer.
jeffreygoesto
Or "Didn't wash hands... Didn't wash hands... Didn't wash hands...... Did wash hands!"
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/47/79/c0/4779c078d42b9faf8dda...
agcat
This is a cool product. I carry a JBL speaker with me everytime i use the bathroom in the morning. Haha!
testmasterflex
You get it!
turtlebits
IME, a bathroom fan with good CFM is loud enough to cover sounds.
voidUpdate
How loud is it to cover up the sound of people using the bathroom? Also the FAQ says it produces "sound cancelling sounds", but also has no microphone. Don't you need a microphone to produce the inverse wave and cancel out sound? Or is this using some other kind of "sound cancelling sound" technology?
tfrutuoso
Maybe it's not "Active Noise Cancelling" but it's "White noise louder than the brown noise". Still useful though.
john-h-k
next black mirror episode will be someone screaming for help as they are trapped in the bathroom while their anti-brown-noise device drowns out their pleas and they are left to die in there
ge96
I would just have a boombox ready to play Sabotage by the Beastie Boys whenever I go
alwa
HASS, Roon, a PIR, and Ride of the Valkyries… :s/would//
voidUpdate
I mean if it's configured to drown me out when I'm having digestive troubles, I think they might need to adjust the bit in the Q&A about it not disturbing my sleeping partner
drited
It seems to have a clock so it doesn't turn on at night?
Hey HN!
I posted here some years ago trying to raise money for a Kickstarter for a product I call Loodio.
Loodio is a motion activated music player for bathrooms that plays music during the bathroom visit to give users privacy during their sacred moments.
The kickstarter failed, but I managed to create a product eventually with a lot of effort.
I managed to sell 150 units of the first unit, mostly to United States but to all different parts of the world while working on the next version.
The problem with the first version was that it was running on a Raspberry Pi Zero W (that had to be wall connected) and it was pretty big, had crappy sound and took a minute to start since it had to boot a whole linux system. I was running it on a python script and unix services. To add music, people had to SSH into the unit so you can imagine how painful that was for some.
However customers loved it! But I knew I could do better. The most common request was battery operation.
Here are some reviews of version 1: https://loodio.com/pages/reviews
I'm proud to say that Loodio 2 is finally here and is working like I imagined when I started working on it almost 5 years ago now.
Loodio 2 introduces battery operation with 1 week of battery life (~5 hours of active operation). It has great sound and an easy way to add your own music with SD card support (4GB included).
It doesn't require any app. Can be run without WiFi (however you lose some features like internet radio, time updates, software updates and weather)
Why does it have a display, you may ask? Because, I used to have an electric toothbrush that came with a display. That display showed how long you were brushing to make sure you did your 2 minutes per brush. When I wasn't brushing my teeth, it showed the current time. And I stopped using the electric tooth brush (because a dentist told me they are too harsh on your teeth) but kept the display for probably 5 years afterwards because I noticed I really want to know the time while getting ready for school/work in the morning. Another thing I noticed was that I always check the weather outside, so I could dress appropriately.
So, Loodio shows you the time and weather (optionally) as well as playing music during your visit. These features together with the lights, are features that I think people don't expect to use but with time becomes as important as the music. Customer interviews verify this.
I wasted a lot of money trying to outsource the development the first 18 months. I then decided to start doing it myself. The version I'm selling is actually the 25th(!) iteration of the product. The problem with hardware is that it takes you around a month to iterate a circuit (if you don't live next to the factory in Shenzhen) because of the cycle 'Designing->Order from China->Testing->Repeat'. And I had no experience of electronics when starting out.
The enclosure is made from empty PCBs to save money for injection tooling later. It looks pretty cool. But mainly, works great!
I want to give credit to Tadeusz Karpinski and Velimir Stoleski that ported my crappy python script to the ESP32 that is running Loodio 2.
You need to try it! I really think you're gonna like it! https://loodio.com