Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016) • Hacker News Board

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#11

Post by zwieback » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 1:49 PM UTC

That's a nice looking panel, would like to hear a little more detail on the wiring and switching of AC loads. At work we're only allowed to go up to 50V, for everything else we have to call in an electrician and that costs $$$.

edit: found some more detail in the direct link - very interesting. I wonder if you have to get something like that inspected wherever it was installed.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#12

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 1:50 PM UTC

newshorts wrote: post #4

When I see companies build bespoke solutions like this I can’t help but wonder which client paid for that. Don’t get me wrong I would love to spend the time to build a system like that, as an engineer it sound fun! No doubt this project came at the cost of someone paying the company for value that was not transferred Sorry for being Daniel Downer here…

[deleted]

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#13

Post by treesknees » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

The technical detail blog post has a bit more information. At first I was wondering why they decided to go with an RPi instead of a few enterprise servers, and it looks like they're utilizing the GPIO interfaces to interact with relays to power some of it.

https://www.monterail.com/blog/2016/smart-office-raspberry-p...

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#14

Post by _joel » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

That's pretty cool. I mean I've worked in offices with tons on Pi's but they've been mainly just driving monitoring and visualisation displays. Seeing some other automation and streaming stuff in neat.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#15

Post by detaro » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 1:53 PM UTC

newshorts wrote: post #4

When I see companies build bespoke solutions like this I can’t help but wonder which client paid for that. Don’t get me wrong I would love to spend the time to build a system like that, as an engineer it sound fun! No doubt this project came at the cost of someone paying the company for value that was not transferred Sorry for being Daniel Downer here…

Curious, if you visit a company you contract with do you apply this to everything? "So, did we pay for this coffee machine? How about this TV?"

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#16

Post by ahyattdev » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:05 PM UTC

yardie wrote: post #10

This is a really cool project and as a hacker of the Raspberry Pi since v1b I love to see it. Clicking on the Monterail about page I really do appreciate when companies list their teams. It's that small bit of credit that I feel goes a long way. It appears more common in European companies. American companies will typically list the board and executives; ICs are treated as interchangeable cogs with no credit given ex…

I believe part of the reason for American companies to not list teams publicly is to guard against easily poaching talent using that data.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#17

Post by JaimeThompson » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:06 PM UTC

albertzeyer wrote: post #9

We use a small drink kiosk touch pad powered by Rasperry Pi, using this simple software project: https://github.com/rwth-i6/drink-kiosk Works great. Except the SD card seems to be dying now after 3 years of constant usage (well, less usage during the enforced home-office times).

Check out the high endurance SD cards they typically support 10 to 100 times the writes other SD cards do and aren't that much more expensive. They are most often used in dashcams and the like.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#18

Post by hdjjhhvvhga » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

Could someone explain it to me what burger memes are about? I'm not sure if displaying meat on screen is a good idea unless you run a fast food shop.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#19

Post by Arrath » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #15

newshorts wrote: post #4

When I see companies build bespoke solutions like this I can’t help but wonder which client paid for that. Don’t get me wrong I would love to spend the time to build a system like that, as an engineer it sound fun! No doubt this project came at the cost of someone paying the company for value that was not transferred Sorry for being Daniel Downer here…

Curious, if you visit a company you contract with do you apply this to everything? "So, did we pay for this coffee machine? How about this TV?"

I sure do this, if they stock the bathrooms with single ply.

Re: Nine Raspberry Pis powering an office (2016)

#20

Post by Damogran6 » Mon, Oct 25, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

My RPi's are like lottery tickets. I buy them with the thought of all they could be used for...then collect duct in the junk drawer.

I also tell myself I'm supporting the manufacturer, though it would appear they don't need my help.