Home-Brew Touch-Sensitive Furniture Turns Annoyance Into Comfort

Some of today’s technology was groundbreaking twenty or thirty years ago, but today it is quite outdated. One such outdated technology is the light switch. We have smartphones that we can communicate with anyone no matter where they are, but we still have to physically walk over to the light switch and press a button. For a tinkering techie, it didn’t make sense so he created a truly useful hack that turned his regular nightstand into a piece of touch-sensitive furniture.

The button is a good device but does it have to have the same fundamental design as it did thirty years ago? Not according to a home-brewing techie who turned the technology on its head and instead installed capacitive touch strips in three different locations on his now touch-sensitive furniture, which not only enables him to turn on and off lights with a simple touch but also turns annoyance into comfort in a pretty geeky way.

By utilizing these capacitive touch strips, the developer was able to alternate what LED lights to activate with different touch patterns. One touch and the LED light underneath the nightstand is activated while a double tap activates the lamp on top of the nightstand.

The hack is one of the coolest and unobtrusive ones I have seen in a while, and it blends seamlessly into the design of the nightstand itself. This touch-sensitive furniture hack could probably be installed in pretty much any furniture that would be enhanced by a little bit of touch-sensitive technology. Comfort is a huge reason why some of the world’s most advanced technologies have been invented. It is through creating more comfort in our lives and through the use of technology that we actually drive innovation forward, as weird as that might sound.

Hopefully this touch-fanatic tinkerer will keep innovating and modding his home to turn more of his belongings into touch-sensitive furniture, which further optimizes and enables true comfort. Home-brew projects like this one always have a place in our lives, no matter how little or how much it optimizes.