Best High-Tech Toilet?

shellac writes "For a number of years now, Japan has had incredibly high-tech toilets, complete with a funky electronic control panel that controls a water jet for cleaning the posterior, a hot air blow dryer, a fake flushing sound to cover up those noisy "Dumb & Dumber" style sessions, a seat warmer, and other nice features, not to mention the occasional amusing gaijin encounter. Prototype models can also chemically analyze urine using lasers. The manufacturer, Toto, has made these available in the US and in other countries, but they have failed to largely fulfill their promised potential, despite their popularity in Japan. There is some evidence Kohler toilets is keeping these out of American markets. The toilets also appear to be a victim of poor marketing on Toto's part, which in all fairness may be due to Western advertising taboos that do not exist in Japan. I know I would love to have one of these, and I suspect many others would as well. What does that /. community think of these toilets? Can anyone post a personal review?"

Clean my posterior?

[hendridm]

Do we really want water spraying up at our posteriors from a toilet? Seems like cleanup would be more work, and I wouldn't rely on a towel unless I was able to do some actual CLEANING and not just getter the dingleberries wet. Your other option is toilet paper which never stands up nicely to moisture. I don't want to get my ass wet after a nice healthy movement anyway.

I suppose this is what a bidet is essentially for, but at least you use it with the intention of actually doing to real cleaning of the undercarriage.

Health Check

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember a Popular Science article on toilets that would check levels of blood sugar, and various other checks on items prior (during) their flush. Looked interesting, also included the ability to dial-out/in for stats and checks by health-care types.

Needed: affordable self-cleaning public toilets

[Animats]

San Francisco has automated self-cleaning public toilets from JCDeaux. [jcdecauxusa.com] They're bulky and incredibly expensive, costing something like $60,000 per year to maintain. A complete cleaning cycle occurs after each use. Including the floor. There's a phone link for calling 911, a remote maintenance interface, and multilingual recorded voice prompts. Wheelchair accessable. Accepts both quarters and "homeless tokens", which are returned after use. Incredibly overdesigned. San Francisco could only afford 20, and they need at least 100.

I've seen the innards of the things when they're opened up for maintenance. They're built out of components from the Telemechanique industrial automation catalog. There are motors, valves, pumps, tanks, lights, and a computer with a rack of interface cards in a stainless steel box. That works, but it's an expensive way to go. You don't make a mass-produced product that way. You could build a washing machine, say, from industrial automation components, and it would work fine, but cost upwards of $10,000.

Some units from Japan designed for mass-production would help.

I own one of these!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi All,

I actually brought one of these from Japan! It is the best thing that I ever owned!!
The seat stays warm (perfect for those late night hacking session bathroom breaks after too much Taco Bell). It is definitally cleaner then just plain paper :-) The warm water really cleans the backside well.

Every one of my friends who tried it were all very impressed by my captians chair, and a few of them actually bought one in the States.

Word of adivce, if you import you have to change from Metric->US, and I suggest you get a Transformer (you don't want to fry the computer)

Regards,
The Happy Toliet Dude

Seat Warmer

[Cire]

The seat warmer part is really weird. When I was in Japan I used one and it always felt as if some really huge guy had been sitting on it for two hours just before I got there.

Cire

The other one

[max1969]

My SO (Female) had one at her parents home. They have a feature which helps clean during her period. And it helps after making love.

M

Japan is amazing...

[SoupaFly]

I lived there for a couple of years and had a great time. I fully agree with others who have actually experienced the high tech toilets, they are really nice.

The one thing I thought was really interesting though was that they have these ultra-high tech toilets.. and then there are the ultra-low tech toilets. Basically nothing more than a porcelain hole. You literally have to squat down to use it because there is no seat. and you'd better not lose your balance.

Re:Lasers?

[deglr6328]

Interestingly (to me anyway), the technology that would be required to make this sort of analysis possible and still fit in to the size of a toilet while being cheap enough to sell for common use was just invented two months ago [slashdot.org]. The complex kinds of analysis(more than just glucose measurements) they are hoping to eventually do with these things(cancer detection etc.) is going to require looking at the presence and concentration of complex biomolecules, which presumably they'd use and FTIR setup to do. The new "Quantum-Cascade" lasers are the only ones to offer the small, solid state, tunable, mid-infrared, coherent, broadband lightsource you would need for the spectroscopy instrument.

I used a "washlet" for a couple of years

[hqm]

IN Japan, they refer to the washing toilets as "washlets". I had one in our apartment when living in Japan for two years.

Simply put, after using the washlet for two years, coming back to the US and using only toilet paper now is like wiping my ass with dried leaves.

As someone else pointed out, the biggest obstacle to adoption of these things in the US is probably the lack of AC power next to the toilet.

Otherwise, I would love to have washlets in my house in the US. The heated seat is great on those cold mornings, and the warm water washing is much cleaner and healthier and more comfortable than dry toilet paper (yuck!).

Just like with mobile phones and healthy food, the Japanese are ahead of us in this area.

Toto Toilet Paper Holders

[d_j_p_3]

Having lived in Japan and enjoyed the high-tech toilets in my own home, we found that the only thing that we wanted in our home was the "high-tech" toilet paper dispenser. This wonderful gadget allows the easiest change of toilet paper in history. Just lift the new roll into place. We special ordered one for our new home!

See it here:
http://www.totousa.com/toto/admin/upload/pd fspc/yh 51t2.pdf

The pictures don't really do them justice, but the idea is simple. Two dowels extend into the center of the roll from each side of the dispenser. They are hinged so that they both lift up, but they don't go past horizontal, and they are on a spring so they want to snap down to the horizontal position. To change a roll, you lift the new toilet paper up from underneath, the dowels hinge up and release the old roll and then snap into the new roll. Then you lower the new roll and the dowels stop at horizontal again. Beautiful. We argue over who gets to change the roll.