They are in front of the elevators at an outdoor multi story parking garage around my area. That's all I wanted to share, thanks.
this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
54 points (87.5% liked)
Just Post
1410 readers
64 users here now
Just post something π
Lemmy's general purpose discussion community with no specific topic.
Sitewide lemmy.world rules apply here.
Additionally, this is a no AI content community. We are here for human interaction, not AI slop! Posts or comments flagged as AI generated will be removed.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I responded further down but the infrared equivalent to these are very useful and explicitly solve for the energy waste issue you describe. Infrared heaters canβt heat open air which means heat-energy is transferred right to solid surfaces. It is extremely efficient in areas with any amount of airflow as the heat isnβt able to be blown away as itβs radiating from the surfaces below the heater, not the heater or the air between.
I bet we can take it even further. Switch it out for a phased array of infrared emitters that track and target people based on body temperature. Then it won't have to be on all the time and there's no way it could possibly go wrong.
Nah we can go way further, what we need is to switch from infrared to microwaves. By emitting microwaves at the right frequency, we can directly transfer energy in a super efficient way. We could tune it to make water molecules vibrate and turn that energy directly into heat. Since humans are basically bags of water, they'd be pretty warm without much energy required at all.
Being around microwaves like that has been proven to melt chocolate bars in pockets, though.
That might work. You could use masers, but I think, in the interest of costs, a cavity magnetron and waveguide would be a better choice for generating the microwaves. You'd have to build a large metal cage around the area with the gaps being smaller than the wavelength to make sure you weren't heating anything unintended or causing electrical interference to nearby devices/circuits.
There'll be the problem of the resultant interference pattern in the--what should we call this?--microwave sauna, creating cold and hot spots. You could set it up so the magnetron and waveguide move around, but that's a failure point centered on the most expensive components. It would probably be wiser to put a rotating platform in the sauna to move the subjects through the bands of positive and negative interference for more even heating.
You'll probably need to have controls for power level and time. Can't have the thing on full blast constantly or people will get a little too warm. Those controls will have to be on the outside, so they don't receive interference from the microwaves. Also, it'll be really important to educate people not to bring metal with sharp edges into the sauna, otherwise the potential difference between the magnetron and the point/edge of the metal can overcome the electrical resistance of air, creating a plasma arc that could short the whole thing and electrify whatever the metal is connected to. It needn't be a long list of banned items, just simple things like cell phones, bank cards with chips, zippers, keys, jewelry, dog tags etc.
One of the coolest things about this solution is based on the fact that corn kernels have the moisture to absorb enough energy from the microwaves to make steam and cook internally until they rupture, forming a tasty snack. You could totally put a button on the control panel for making popcorn.
"All we found was a pile of ashes."
We haven't heard any complaints, though! Just the distant sizzling sound of contentment.
Better yet, people just wear better clothes and retain body heat instead of sticking heaters outside.
With respect, I fail to see how that advances shareholder value. How would you even build a recurring monthly fee into the use of clothes?
Im wondering how large a phased array of infrared sources would be