According to their website, it is so the toilet can be paired to a Sanela control app which apparently can be used to control certain functional aspects of the urinal, as well as gives quick access to user manuals
Now if only we could find a way to hack this app, so that the toilet plays “It’s Raining Men” every time it flushes… Now that would really be something
Bluetooth is a questionable choice unless the company also offered some kind of network appliance that incorporates connections in a cheaper way than all units being networked. Allowing the hub, as a serviceable component, to provide additional monitoring and functionality without requiring each unit to also contain the components. There’s certainly reasons, not outlandish either, but who knows?
I could honestly see the appeal of a way for the toilet to analyze your poop and tell you that you should be eating more fiber or that you need to see a doctor because it’s seen X, Y, and Z symptoms. It’s like the joke about German toilets being so you can monitor your health, but with much less of the nastiness.
Of course, we can’t have nice things and you’ll just get ads for Metamucil or the colorectal-cancer-from microplastics law firms in the style of mesothelioma lawyers.
One very cool thing would be a urinal that does internal health checks on your piss and allows you to access that on your phone. But yeah bluetooth is a shit choice for that too.
Seeing as they could accomplish basically the same thing with an indicator and a QR code, its crazy a bt chip and antenna were both used in this. My only remaining question: how is it powered?
Serious answer: it’s a “smart” urinal, in that it can report usage statistics, alert maintenance staff to problems, and be remotely controlled.
If you’re in the facilities maintenance business, Bluetooth-enabled equipment can be a good way to get an operational technology network up and running without a lot of costly retrofit.
Unserious Answer: it counts the fluid as it passes, because the last counting guy kept getting the count wrong and so people would grossly overpay/underpay when they used the urinal