• Question: Is there any electronic device we use at home that doesn't use a code to work?

    Asked by anon-257014 on 15 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Martin Coath

      Martin Coath answered on 15 Jun 2020: last edited 15 Jun 2020 12:04 pm

      Excellent question! In the past *most* electronic devices were not digital and didn’t have stored programs in any form. Now most devices are computers of some sort.

      Just looking around my own room I have a Fender guitar amplifier that works in the old-fashioned way – but it was built in the 1970s! 😀

      I also still have a couple of clocks that are quarz but probably don’t have a stored program (I can’t prove that) and I have an FM radio which probably doesn’t either.

      I will add to this post if I think of anything else – this has really made me think 👍

      *** Late Additions ***

      I have an electromechanical cassette tape recorder I haven’t used in more than 10 years … I will keep thinking.

    • Photo: Louise Davies

      Louise Davies answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      It depends on what you mean by “code”! By definition, most things that use electricity will have some sort of controller in them to tell them how to react to different inputs – and if this is complex enough it will probably be solved by “code”. However, off the top of my head, something simple like a light bulb in a lamp or in your house probably won’t have code (unless it’s a fancy light sensitive one or a smart light or something!) – because you can literally just make the switch “break” the electric circuit to turn it on and off.

    • Photo: Will Furnell

      Will Furnell answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      There’s actually very little today that doesn’t have some microcontroller (a small processor designed for what we call ’embedded devices’ – devices that usually have one specific function).

      Even your toaster probably has a microcontroller for safety reasons, like checking it doesn’t get too hot, or even timing if it’s fancy!

      I’d probably say two possible things that you use at home, and are made recently, that don’t have need any code to work are a hairdryer or a desk fan. Both would usually work mechanically.

      I can’t even say for sure light bulbs, as ‘smart bulbs’ are really popular now so you might have a few at home! They use a microcontroller for connecting to the internet, and changing colours via your phone.

    • Photo: Steve Williams

      Steve Williams answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      Over the last twenty years there has been a drive to remove the old expensive and unreliable mechanic parts of almost all devices with electronic parts. So most devices we now have in our homes have a micro control doing all the work. Somethings don’t like kettles, toasters, vacuum cleaners etc but they aren’t really devices.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      I don’t think there’s any code in the fuse box which protects my house’s electricity supply – and I still have an old (non-‘smart’) electricity meter. But that’s “electric” rather than “electronic”, I suppose! The speakers on my hi-fi (sound system) probably have analogue circuitry splitting the sound frequencies to the different speaker cones (high frequencies to the “tweeter”, low frequencies to the “woofer” – great names!), but more modern ones maybe do that digitally too – mine are rather old!
      Remember, if it works on software, it can be broken by software, so things running on code need protecting, paradoxically, against other code…

    • Photo: Olivia Lala

      Olivia Lala answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      Any device using “analogue electronics” (as opposed to “digital electronics”) will most likely work without any sort of computer code. As Martin already mentioned, vintage guitar amplifiers are a good example. Wired, cheap headphones (without any fancy features such as active noise cancelling, equalisation, phone answering capabilities…) won’t use computer code either.
      Other devices such as simple coffee makers, kettles or beard trimmers will work without any code. However, these devices may be considered electrical appliances rather than electronic devices.

    • Photo: Jane Kennedy

      Jane Kennedy answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      I got an email from my thermostat a few weeks ago, asking me to change its battery… So I think very few!

      As you can see, many devices in our homes now rely on code to work, when in the past they didn’t need to. The problem with this is that code is not the kind of thing you can write once and forget about. It needs to be regularly maintained to work, and consumers rely on the companies that make these products to continue suppporting the software. Here’s a news story from earlier this year abiut the outrage customers felt when a premium speaker company announced they would no longer support some older products: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51206604

    • Photo: Andy Smith

      Andy Smith answered on 15 Jun 2020:

      Great question! This one took me a long time to think of something because (as many others have already said) almost every electronic device now uses some sort of microcontroller with code. The only thing I can think of is a kettle. That has a basic on/off switch, and a simple electronic circuit to turn off when a certain temperature is reached.

      Before microcontrollers were common, each of our electronic devices needed it’s own purpose-built electronics to function. This was expensive to design and manufacture. So we moved over to using general-purpose microcontrollers. Or in other words, we put the same microchip in everything, but then programmed it with different code. This means we can mass-produce the computer chips, making them very cheap.

    • Photo: Anar Yusifov

      Anar Yusifov answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      Flashlights, soldering iron and light bulbs… I want to return a question back: what organic objects do you have at home which can compute.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 16 Jun 2020:

      The only device I can think of which hasn’t been mentioned before is a solar panel, since all it does is absorb sunlight to generate electricity. Of course, if you want extra functionality like being able to use the energy to power something in your home, then it might need a microcontroller, which is a component which holds and uses the code. But just using it to charge something like a mobile phone shouldn’t need code. Very good question, really made me think!

Comments

  • Photo: Martin

    Martin commented on :

    As a supplement to Andy’s answer that about using the same chip in anything:
    The invention of the microprocessor is bound up with a Japanese Company asking Intel (yes, really, they existed before the microprocessor!) to develop a chip that could be used in more than one of their desktop calculators, rather than a different set of chips for each model. They didn’t want anyone else to know about this (for obvious reasons). The engineers at Intel realised that what they were designing was a product they could sell to anyone, to do anything. The rest, as they say, is history.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busicom