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Show HN: Elevators

john.fun

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Re: Show HN: Elevators

#371

Post by razakel »

gpvos wrote: post #326
TeMPOraL wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally a new elevator installation would have a trial period where they record usage There's a tricky problem here: as a user, the first thing you do upon discovering a new elevator, especially if you expect to be using it regularly, is to observe how it behaves and adjust your own expectations/behavior to it.

I think you belong to a small percentage of the population doing that. Most people don't bother with such detailed life microoptimizations.

I think people do, but it's subconsciously.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#372

Post by Ekaros »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #140
omoikane wrote: post #68

> Destination Dispatch [...] are in general worse I wonder if this is an artifact of how the author used random destinations. I worked in a building that used Destination Dispatch, and the common travel pattern seemed to be: - Everyone who is not on the ground floor generally want to go to the ground floor. - People who are on the ground floor generally travel in large groups to the same destination. This happens bec…

Surely there's a dataset out there with elevator calls for an office building you could test on, instead of the poor random destination case. Surprisingly, claude failed to find a good one. Also, part of destination dispatch (I'm guessing based on experience) removes the 'stopping on every floor problem', so the real test would be total time including wait at that point I think.

I think most of these sort of data sets are considered trade secrets. They are certainly recorded and even stored. But as they could give competitive edge between manufacturers they are not publicly shared. And access to them would mean building maintenance or managers giving access to their occupants information which some of the occupants would not like.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#373

Post by newtwentysix »

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.

Double-click to cancel: is there in many of the recent (10+yrs) lifts I've been in

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#374

Post by Ekaros »

acomjean wrote: post #117
omoikane wrote: post #68

> Destination Dispatch [...] are in general worse I wonder if this is an artifact of how the author used random destinations. I worked in a building that used Destination Dispatch, and the common travel pattern seemed to be: - Everyone who is not on the ground floor generally want to go to the ground floor. - People who are on the ground floor generally travel in large groups to the same destination. This happens bec…

Is it because the criteria is wait time not travel time? Destination dispatch would avoid some extra stops on the trip. I just visited a new building with destination dispatch, so it seems to be still around. My EE roommate in college had to build an elevator circuit as a final problem. It was on a bread board and had a bunch of call buttons and had a motor and a clear disk with black squares so it could figure out w…

The criteria might also be throughput. That is moving maximum number of passengers in which case total travel time is likely much better metric than wait time.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#376

Post by ufmace »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #327
_kb wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is already there. This also gets more interesting when you expand the scope from just elevators to general building occupancy and movement. In the simplest sense, I've seen this tied into security gates so as people badge on when entering the building there's already suitable elevator movement to meet demand by time the foot traffic reaches the lift lobby. That can then also feed into destination dispatch if…

> (...) and a lot of very good things from a sustainability and general optimisation perspective. The flip side is it also has the potential to be an absolute dystopian privacy nightmare. Privacy is an illusion for most people, and in office spaces, it's also a red herring. Wifi trilateration doesn't make things worse when you have a CCTV camera on every corner, badge reader at every other door, and presence sensing…

> The generalization and summary of this rant is: slack is good. Happiness lives in slack. There is such thing as optimizing too much. Also the small, isolated systems under optimization, are in reality neither small nor isolated.

Yeah there's a certain type of engineer mindset that loves the idea of optimizing things. But if you want to really optimize something, you have to carefully account for every single possible factor, situation, and use-case. Miss anything, and it's a much bigger disaster than saving 2% of whatever resource. It's rarely worth it.

Much better to treat the presumptions as a vague heuristic, make generous assumptions and add some slack, and call that good enough. Now there's probably enough slack to cover most of the edge cases you didn't think of, other things you based your original assumptions on changing under you, etc.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#377

Post by yccs27 »

Neywiny wrote: post #368
theodorejb wrote: post #353

The worst situation I've encountered is after a large conference when everyone is leaving the hotel at once. An elevator quickly fills up on the way down, but then wastes time stopping at every subsequent floor with a call, even though no one else can fit inside. At each floor the elevator stops, the doors open, the waiting people see it's already packed, the doors close, and this repeats on the next 15 floors before…

It would have to be done by weight. If you had a button to not allow stopping for others, people would abuse it. If it was a camera, security issue. Presumably if somebody is moving a piano or something else heavy it'll be fine

You could also detect when the elevator call button gets pressed again right after the elevator has left a floor. That means someone wasn't able to get on the elevator (and is now waiting for the next one).

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#378

Post by ufmace »

noisy_boy wrote: post #256
shepherdjerred wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we'll see LLM elevator scheduling

I apologize for bringing you to the 29th floor instead of the 3rd floor as you requested. That's on me. I will do better next time.

Sorry, I forgot that this building only has 18 floors, it's on me that your elevator is now airborne.

Re: Show HN: Elevators

#380

Post by andai »

theodorejb wrote: post #353

The worst situation I've encountered is after a large conference when everyone is leaving the hotel at once. An elevator quickly fills up on the way down, but then wastes time stopping at every subsequent floor with a call, even though no one else can fit inside. At each floor the elevator stops, the doors open, the waiting people see it's already packed, the doors close, and this repeats on the next 15 floors before…

At that point I'd just get out and take the stairs. Race ya!
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