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Boring Tech: No-Touch Foamy Soap Dispenser

You can file this under “2021 hitting hard, man”.

The day has come that I am publishing something on my website not just about soap, but a soap dispenser. To be very honest with you though, this was a purchase initiated by my girlfriend that I am really enjoying.
I am usually the type of person that likes and defends mechanical systems of any kind as way too many things in our lives are either electric now for absolutely no reason, or even worse want to be connected to the internet at all times (to collect & sell data about you). I have now been working from home for many years and very regularly wash my hands, even pre-covid hand-washing hype, and therefore made heavy use of our previous soap dispensers which can be described as “fine”. They were nothing I would write a blog post about but they also did nothing wrong.

This dispenser is something else though. The packaging is not very reassuring at all, as it comes in a plain white cardboard box barely big enough to keep the dispenser inside, but the way this thing operates is very satisfying.

  1. It reacts very quickly
  2. I have never had to wiggle my hand underneath the sensor/nozzle to make it recognize that I am trying to use some soap
  3. The dispenser moves the soap very quickly. I would say that it isn’t slower than taking one to two pumps with a manual soap dispenser.

Getting these basic feature so right totally won me over and we now have two. The battery came pre charged in both and the package includes a little USB-A to USB-C cable to charge it through the rubber sealed USB-C port at the back. Neither had to be recharged since we got them and neither the soap extrusion speed or any other indicator that it might be low(-er) on battery has decreased so far.

I would assume that you can buy suitable watery soap in bulk refill packs but as per their instructions, watering down liquid soap with the viscosity similar to honey works too. They recommend a 2:1 water to soap ration but I’d recommend using more like 3:2. It’s soap, it doesn’t need to be an accurate science.

I am sure that the same dispenser is sold around the world under different nameless brands but here are amazon.de & amazon.com links.

Edit 2022-01-15:
I have been a little depressed to write this update as I really like this stupid soap dispenser. They’re cheap garbage and break almost instantly. We’ve now purchased three of them with one working perfectly to this day, one arrived broken and the third broke after one week of usage. On the inside they’re nothing but a little PCB at the top, a 18650 battery cell and a little DC motor + pump. There are no fancy parts in here though it appears as if there is not a single reliable manufacturer for these simple devices. It is all just cheap Chinese shit and it really angers me. I wasn’t even able to bring myself to send the last one back, as I know that it will end up in a landfill. I rather cut it open too and harvest the little motor & 18650 battery cell. Maybe I can use them in some project in the future.

24.11.2021