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Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

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Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#71
post #44

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 probably more important for the elevator to behave predictably. Assuming everyone waiting for the elevator knows where it is at

1. it should always stop if it's going in the direction you want to go.

2. All people inside the elevator must be dropped off before changing direction

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#72
post #34

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.

In Seoul's subway stations, elevators usually take forever to close, like long enough to make you think "Geez if I just walked I would be on the other floor by now!"

And that's exactly the reason, i.e., to shoo away those with a good pair of legs, because otherwise people who do need elevators might end up waiting forever.

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#73
post #34

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.

That seems like a prodigious waste of everyone's time. In Japan, from what I've experienced, when there are not many people, you can get the door to close immediately after you get in, and it starts moving very soon after that. Imagine all the productive hours lost because of this.

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#74

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…

Otis offered that as an option from the 1960s. Here's the vocabulary.[1] It's still available, but seems to have fallen out of fashion with the decline of elevator music.

There was even a "You are pressing too many floor buttons" message.

[1] https://www.soundboard.com/sb/OtisElevatorVoiceAnnouncements

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#75
post #34

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.

> many places have a minimum time the doors have to remain open under ADA guidelines.

What's the logic behind requiring this to happen every time? Why not just have a handicap button like doors do, and letting the elevator stay efficient the rest of the time?

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#76
post #67

> According to the chart, if you’re on an elevator made by Mitsubishi, Matsushita, Toshiba, or America’s Otis, you can cancel a floor by quickly tapping twice (“double-clicking”) on the corresponding button. If I had to guess I'd say in the US it's nearly always Otis or Schindler elevators that I'm riding. Do the Otis elevators installed in Japan have this feature but the Otis ones in the US lack the feature? I've ne…

I have had it work once in the US out of more than 10 attempts. It did also work on a cruise ship, which was good because kids had hit all the floor buttons and run. Double tapping or holding a lighted button works to cancel all the time in Japan. There are other button codes. Once, when I was in Japan and we waited at 8am for a lot of full elevators going past opening up the person I got in with (to another nearly f…

G button?

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#77
post #72
post #34

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.

In Seoul's subway stations, elevators usually take forever to close, like long enough to make you think "Geez if I just walked I would be on the other floor by now!" And that's exactly the reason, i.e., to shoo away those with a good pair of legs, because otherwise people who do need elevators might end up waiting forever.

But even elevators in skyscrapers usually take forever to close, and nobody expects you to walk up stairs to the 50th floor just because you have a good pair of legs.

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#78

I feel canceling floors is unsafe and can permit abusive use of the elevator by predators of all sorts.

Just hate it when a bobcat is hogging the elevator.

Or any of the elevators at Miramax and The Weinstein Company.

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#79
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had it work once in the US out of more than 10 attempts. It did also work on a cruise ship, which was good because kids had hit all the floor buttons and run. Double tapping or holding a lighted button works to cancel all the time in Japan. There are other button codes. Once, when I was in Japan and we waited at 8am for a lot of full elevators going past opening up the person I got in with (to another nearly f…

G button?

The "G" button often represents the Ground floor (aka "first floor" here in US). Sometimes in the US 'G' indicates "Garage".

Re: Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

#80

I remember a long time ago encountering an elevator (in the US) where the physical buttons were the push on/push off type so you could cancel using another press, and they also popped back out once the desired floor was reached. Anyone else remember that type of control? It's probably from the 40s/50s. I haven't seen one since.

In Russia (and I presume in other former USSR republics) there's a once-common Soviet-era type of elevator that has buttons that stay pushed down and pop out like that. With a loud click that scares the shit out of you if you don't expect it. Except IIRC you couldn't push multiple buttons at once, all of them would pop out on the next stop. And you definitely couldn't undo them.
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