Eli5 why does the flush sensor on a touchless toilet go off and splash my butt at the slightest movement while I’m sitting down, but the touchless sensor on a sink won’t turn on unless I’m in JUST the right spot?
In: Engineering
The sensor is sending out a signal and track the time until it comes back. With that, it can tell if the signal bounced off of you, or the bathroom door (This is essentially how radars and sonar work). So the toilet uses this signal to know when the user sits down (start sending out the signal) and gets up (flushes the toilet).
However, if your bending over a bit far for whatever reason, that signals can bounce on your back and bounce away from the receptor on the toilet, hitting the wall behind you. The toilet is then like “oh shit (pun), this is taking a while, so the dude might have just left and we didn’t catch it.” So then it flushes, even when you’re sitting right there.
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