An improved toilet seat lifter is provided by a hands-free toilet seat control for controlling the positions of the toilet seat comprising a safety ratchet pedal connected to a gearwheel unit which transmits the transitional or rotational ratchet movements of the pedal into an amplified circular push and pull of a control rod connected to the toilet seat via universal joints. A number of subfields are generated from input video signals, and subfield data for each subfield are output. In addition, the biochip unit can be attached to the bottom side of the micro thermo-electric temperature control unit, and it can also be integrated into the micro thermo-electric temperature control unit. The state information may include only the quantity of a state change.