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Show HN: Elevators

john.fun

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Re: Show HN: Elevators

#311

Post by dsego »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #203

All I want to know is why the heck I can't un-press a button I pressed by accident. This should be very simple. Press once to turn the button on, press again to turn it off. Or I guess you could do long-press to turn off or something if you're worried about confusing people, but I really don't think that should be necessary. We know how toggles work. The button lights up when it's on.

In some elevators there is a stop lever for emergencies, but I found out it cleared all the selected floors as well. So in my building if I've made a mistake or a kid selected all the floors, I can just flip the stop toggle and reset everything.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#312

Post by esikich »

donalhunt wrote: post #293
esikich wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very well could be the case that people get more upset about waiting for the car than total travel time when they are already in the car. Ie, pick them up sooner even if travel time is longer. In fact, I would bet that this is the case.

Having chatted with friends who have gotten stuck in elevators, you definitely should care about total travel time. In one case, the building was still being commissioned and it took a while for anyone to even realize they were stuck (could spawn a whole discussion about launch processes in itself).

Obviously. I'm talking about waiting for the elevator for 30 seconds, total trip is 2 minutes vs 1 minute 30 sec wait and total trip is 1m45s.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#313

Post by pavlov »

One of the best-loved Maxis games of the 1990s was SimTower which was all about designing elevator flows for your skyscraper.

It might be fun to revisit. The game was actually of Japanese origin.

The Digital Antiquarian just wrote about it the other week:

https://www.filfre.net/2026/07/the-life-and-times-of-maxis-p...

(Part of an ongoing multi-part Maxis article, SimTower is halfway down in this part 2.)

The origin story:

”As Yoot Saito would be the first to tell you, the rest of the game was really born out of his odd fascination with elevator systems.

> ’Late one night, I was waiting in my building’s lobby for an elevator. There are two cars in my building’s shaft. I pushed the button, but instead of the closest car coming to my floor, the farthest car arrived first. In my usual questioning way, I asked myself, “What happened here? How are these cars logically synchronized?” That was the beginning of SimTower.’

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#314

Post by dsego »

In my residential building we have two elevators, a big one and a small one, the small one can fit 3-4 people if they squeeze together, it can't fit a bicycle. And of course, they don't work independently, so if the small one is already on your floor the big one won't stop there, so if I have my bicycle with me, I need to send the small one to a higher floor first, and since people are using the lifts constantly, sometimes I need to wait for a while and repeat the same process. There were times where the small car came several times before I managed to stop the large one.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#315

Post by socalgal2 »

grishka wrote: post #263

How often do people travel between non-ground floors though? In my own experience, whether it's a residential or an office building, 99% of elevator usage is a) someone going down to the ground floor, and b) someone going up from the ground floor. There are some exceptions like hotels that have amenities on different floors though. The first elevator "algorithm", if you can even call it that, that I've ever encounter…

It's extremely common in an office building I used to work in. The office has 21 floors and people shuffle between them often. Going up or down 1 or 2 floors there are stairs. Also the top 11 floors use different elevators than the bottom 11. They share 1 floor so you can switch

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#316

Post by socalgal2 »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #203

All I want to know is why the heck I can't un-press a button I pressed by accident. This should be very simple. Press once to turn the button on, press again to turn it off. Or I guess you could do long-press to turn off or something if you're worried about confusing people, but I really don't think that should be necessary. We know how toggles work. The button lights up when it's on.

Some elevators do this. It's usually a double tap to clear. THey are less common in the states

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#318

Post by socalgal2 »

tegling wrote: post #142

One case not covered, I believe I saw at London Heathrow was where 4 cars essentially moved people across only 2 floors. With only 1 centralized button, only 1-point-something car was effectively moving people on average, because people had to wait for the currently filled car to have its doors closed and starting to move, before hitting the button to call the next car to pick them up. Imaging 100-200 people in line…

Maybe they took their que from Apple. The Apple Store in Ginza Tokyo used to have a 3 floors and the elevator is just set to go 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1. There are no buttons. It just goes, whether or not people need it. So if you just missed it it might be going up 2 floors and back down for no one. And of course it was slow and held the doors open 10 or 15 seconds per floor

Very form over function.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#319

Post by socalgal2 »

jmyeet wrote: post #8

This is a good article. It reminds me of a story. At a previous employer we had heteregenous elevators. In one bank, some went to the lower half of floors only while others went to all and the company installed a "smart" elevator system. I kind of became known because I was constantly yelling about this system in the feedback group because I hate "smart" elevators and and (IMHO) they just don't work. What actually wo…

According do this video, some of it is I guess regulatory capture? (my memory of that video might be bad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1_qVdekYM

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#320

Post by akoboldfrying »

dsego wrote: post #314

In my residential building we have two elevators, a big one and a small one, the small one can fit 3-4 people if they squeeze together, it can't fit a bicycle. And of course, they don't work independently, so if the small one is already on your floor the big one won't stop there, so if I have my bicycle with me, I need to send the small one to a higher floor first, and since people are using the lifts constantly, som…

This is hilarious. But I'm also thinking: Maybe just use the stairs? Your bike suggests you aren't afraid of a little cardio.
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