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Is the Toilet Free?

madebymany.com

41–50 of 126 posts

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#41

Sounds like the real problem is that you don't have enough toilets.

My thoughts exactly. Kudos for geeking out on the problem, but that shouldn't be necessary.

On the other hand, building new bathrooms or expanding existing ones can be a long and expensive process, so improving the efficiency of existing resources can be a smart way to go.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#42
post #21

That animated background header is making me very motion sick. Ugh.

Can we stop with the nitpicking meta bullshit on every freaking article, please? I don't care about the things you dislike about a random webpage. It wasn't submitted because of a header. In order to read the article that we're actually discussing, you have to scroll down to where you can't see it anymore. It's a 10-second-at-most mild irritation. I would understand if it was an epilepsy warning o something, but it's…

Seriously. You have trouble reading the text? Select All, Copy, open your favorite text editor, Paste, read.

This place is called Hacker News, where "Hacker" is supposed to mean that it's a community of people who build interesting things, yet people can't even be bothered to take five seconds to take matters into their own hands when it comes to reading some text. We're power users. Act like it.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#43
post #12

Random 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

Laundry server sounds interesting. We just reprogrammed the logic board with a few switches on our laundry to make it free for those in the know and twice as much as the other floors for everyone else (keep the riff raff away). It was a small floor (suites) so all 24 of us on the floor (and a few friends from other floors) had access.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#44
post #33

I remember, about 25 years ago, a HUD on each an ever train carriage would indicate whether the toilet was occupied. The HUD was located above the baggage section at the end of each carriage. Occupied was red, and unoccupied was blank. No Raspberry Pi was involved, but through careful social engineering, everyone in the carriage know what the sign meant, There was a physical hardware based fall-back also, which was a…

I'm not sure what's your point; I'm pretty sure this isn't being upvoted because people consider it an amazing accomplishment, but because it's a fun example of how easy it is to connect physical objects to the Internet using the Pi.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#45
post #33

I remember, about 25 years ago, a HUD on each an ever train carriage would indicate whether the toilet was occupied. The HUD was located above the baggage section at the end of each carriage. Occupied was red, and unoccupied was blank. No Raspberry Pi was involved, but through careful social engineering, everyone in the carriage know what the sign meant, There was a physical hardware based fall-back also, which was a…

On the other hand, it is /fun/.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#46
post #40
post #38

Prone to race conditions, unfortunately. What's more frustrating than seeing Yes and then finding the door closing in front of you.

Maybe they could add a reservation queue to the bathroom as new functionality. That would probably be unnecessary blocking if people abandon their place in line.

Or try to predict availability based on recent queries. If there is only one stall open and someone checked its status 30s ago, respond that "maybe" a stall is free.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#47
post #12

Random 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

A commercial laundry server product: http://www.laundryview.com/lvs.php

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#48
post #40
post #38

Prone to race conditions, unfortunately. What's more frustrating than seeing Yes and then finding the door closing in front of you.

Maybe they could add a reservation queue to the bathroom as new functionality. That would probably be unnecessary blocking if people abandon their place in line.

> Maybe they could add a reservation queue to the bathroom as new functionality.

The FIFO system does not take urgency into account. When making a query, it would be good to give an urgency rating on a scale of 0 to some_number.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#49
post #26

These kind of projects are awesome. They may seem "pointless" or "a waste of time" to some PHB-types but they're a wonderful showcase of a great, true-hacker culture and I bet they do a ton for morale. I hope that any future startup I'm involved with has this sort of culture - it's a goal I'll aim for. Well done guys.

Raspberry Pi is great and easy to work with. I got it, I don't need 5 inane projects per day to remind me about it.

I particularly like this one, but for me life is too short to waste time in useless projects.

Re: Is the Toilet Free?

#50
post #12

Random 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

I don't know the current status of the bathroom server, but when I was living in Random, certain bathrooms would be taken offline on Jewish days of rest (since activating the door switch could be considered prohibited work). So it's possible that the server is offline today for Passover.
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