Reminds me a bit of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot
So good.
Is the Toilet Free?
11–20 of 126 posts
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#12Random Hall (a dorm at MIT) has/had a `bathroom server' that did exactly that and also a `laundry server' that tells you whether the laundry machines are busy. The bathroom server used to be at http://bathroom.mit.edu (seemingly offline now) and the laundry server is at http://laundry.mit.edu
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything beyond the red/green light falls into the "because we can, not because we should" category. Does anybody really need a menu bar icon to show them the toilet status? Does this company or its employees benefit in any way from toilet occupancy statistics?
The hacker mindset is to do things just because they are possible. Efficiency and benefit are rarely as important as the pure joy of creating or doing things just because you can. Ruthless efficiency comes into play once you are the owner of a company, but for the engineer the real joy comes from just making stuff.
Very true, and I have to admit that I have many side projects (with huge amounts of 'scope creep') that I've done just because I can.
I have a very hard time justifying that kind of behaviour on my employer's time though.
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#14Random Hall (a dorm at MIT) has/had a `bathroom server' that did exactly that and also a `laundry server' that tells you whether the laundry machines are busy. The bathroom server used to be at http://bathroom.mit.edu (seemingly offline now) and the laundry server is at http://laundry.mit.edu
We desperately need the laundry one in my dorm at Oxford! I have invested way too many brain cycles in thinking about unobtrusive ways of achieving that.
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#15While the hardware part of the job is nicely done, I think there still remains the problem of how to convey the information to the users.
Once a toilet becomes free, everybody waiting will try to aquire the ressource (ie: do a costly walk to the bathroom).
There must already be some gaming theory or performance modelling result that solves this issue, though.
Just a simple idea would be to add a random delay for propagating the information to different users.
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#16While the hardware part of the job is nicely done, I think there still remains the problem of how to convey the information to the users. Once a toilet becomes free, everybody waiting will try to aquire the ressource (ie: do a costly walk to the bathroom). There must already be some gaming theory or performance modelling result that solves this issue, though. Just a simple idea would be to add a random delay for prop…
One of my friends built software to track use of the two washers and two dryers at our local dormcubator. It relied on students to report that they had started a cycle by email; so long as students did this then the website could tell you when the cycle ended because the machines had fairly consistent cycle times.
While he built a virtual queue into the website (type in your email address and we'll send you an email when the last load is done) it turns out that people are really bad at picking up their laundry right when the machine finishes...
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#17Just give each stall its own Instant Messenger id so I can check their status via my client
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#18Sounds like the real problem is that you don't have enough toilets.
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#19Shameless plug: A few co-workers and I hacked together the same thing not too long ago, using an Arduino: http://www.command-tab.com/2013/07/23/gottago/
Re: Is the Toilet Free?
#20I have no experience with hardware. Can someone give some suggestions on where to start if I wanted to do a simple side project like this to gain some experience? Thanks