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I entered an elevator with 2 friends, we were talking, and by accident I came in contact with the buttons. These were all sensor buttons, so without any pressure I had just triggered (almost) all floors, much to the delight of my friends (and even some of the other people in the elevator). As we had to go to the 10th or 11th floor, needless to say that it was quite embarassing ;-)
Why not a simple toggle? Just press the button again once to cancel. Seems way more useful then secret codes.
Other things about Japanese elevators 99% the "close door" button works immediately. Vs say USA where 80% are not even connected and where some are connected but the door doesn't respond for 1-2 seconds? 95% there are no light sensors, only pressure sensors. I'm guessing in the USA those are mandatory that there is a light sensor that if interrupted, causes the doors to open. In Japan those mostly don't exist, there…
One reason door close buttons don’t work is because many places have a minimum time the doors have to remain open under ADA guidelines. Once that time has passed, the door close. So there is no window in which the button would be useful.
Our building has a different scheme where you summon the elevator by telling it which floor you want to go, and there are no controls inside the elevator to set the destination. This supposedly enables better scheduling of elevators.
Our building has a different scheme where you summon the elevator by telling it which floor you want to go, and there are no controls inside the elevator to set the destination. This supposedly enables better scheduling of elevators.
Not supposedly, for some definition of “better scheduling.”. Elevator scheduling is hard. It isn’t even clear what to optimize for. It certainly isn’t only #persons/hour or #person-floors/hour, as that could leave people stranded forever at some floors (example: why would an elevator ever make the long journey for the 10th floor to pick up passengers if it always has passengers waiting to move between doors 2 and 3?)…
It's not that hard. One creates a cost function for each floor. The cost for a floor is the time spent since the button for that floor was pushed. The elevator goes for the floor with the highest cost.
It's the same idea with traffic lights. Have a cost function which is the wait time for each car. Minimize it. Of course, traffic lights never do this, resulting in grossly inefficient light changes.
Have a voice announce each floor. Much better than a stupid chime as each floor is passed, as then blind people have to count.
The voice is cheap as dirt, too. As the IBM PC showed, you can get perfectly intelligible voice from connecting a speaker to a 5V IO pin and turning it on and off rapidly, based on a recorded waveform. Wouldn't cost any more than a chime.
My furnace has a blinkenlight for its status. Slow blink, it's working ok. Fast blink, something wrong. I go have a look, it's blinking. Is that a fast or slow blink? I hate the people that design these things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason door close buttons don’t work is because many places have a minimum time the doors have to remain open under ADA guidelines. Once that time has passed, the door close. So there is no window in which the button would be useful.
I worked in a building once where the close door button started a 3ish second timer then would close. As a side effect if the door was close to closing already it would sometimes actually lengthen the time the door was open. Drove me nuts when people would come in late and hit the button.
Oh wow I wish I had known about this in my last trip to Japan. I entered an elevator with 2 friends, we were talking, and by accident I came in contact with the buttons. These were all sensor buttons, so without any pressure I had just triggered (almost) all floors, much to the delight of my friends (and even some of the other people in the elevator). As we had to go to the 10th or 11th floor, needless to say that it…
Of course the other passengers may not feel that way.
I'm still surprised nobody does the obvious. Have a voice announce each floor. Much better than a stupid chime as each floor is passed, as then blind people have to count. The voice is cheap as dirt, too. As the IBM PC showed, you can get perfectly intelligible voice from connecting a speaker to a 5V IO pin and turning it on and off rapidly, based on a recorded waveform. Wouldn't cost any more than a chime. My furnac…
Voice-announced floors is pretty much universal in China. In Hong Kong, it’s also done in three languages. The current direction (up or down) of the elevator is also announced. There are exceptions, of course, like really old buildings that don’t have rich incorporated owners to retrofit the elevators.
In Korean elevators the standard is to press the button once to cancel. Like a normal press. I wonder if these button press conventions are localized.
People also tend to push the button here without looking whether it's already lit so this would probably backfire.