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Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

newfangled.me

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Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#11

Post by robmiller »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #8
bluthru wrote: post #3

There might be a market for an e-paper based version of this that shows an entire day or week of schedule.

I've been in a few buildings where each door had a fat 15" LCD screen mounted beside it, displaying current and upcoming reservations. Even at my university they were beginning to implement them. You probably need good connections with commercial builders to compete in that space, though.

Or AV designers hired by the architects that specify these products for projects. Most commonly these are something like Crestron[1] or AMX[2] room scheduling panels.

[1] http://www.crestron.com/resources/product_and_programming_re...

[2] http://www.amx.com/products/MSD-431.asp

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#12

Post by jonemo »

bborud wrote: post #4
atmosx wrote: post #2

Sorry, spark.io is down and I'm not sure what it is: A dev-board? Why not use an RPi instead of an arduino for something like this? costs ~ 25-35 USD (depends on model) + a WiFi dongle and you can write code in Ruby/Python?!

Spark core is a low power ARM Cortex M3-based board with WiFi onboard. Very neat. I can give you several good reasons why it is more useful to do this with a Spark core (or an Arduino), but the most important to me is that learning how to program very constrained hardware platforms is useful.

A similar product that has been around for a little longer is electricimp (http://www.electricimp.com). I've done a couple of little projects with it at home, but is has also been used in several consumer products already.

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#13

Post by Edd314159 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #10

Way back before the WWW my student dorm door was plastered in misc comics and clippings - I kept cycling the clippings and being part if a high traffic corridor it got me a number if interesting people knocking to say they enjoyed it. It was I guess my first blog (maybe Pinterest) Anyway, besides that I think this really would be a fantastic solution to the "meeting room" problem. Book a room direct from the door its…

I worked for a very large software corporation for a few years, and we had exactly this. Little touchscreen LCD displays to the side of the door for all the major meeting rooms, on which you could book the room.

Nobody used it for that, though. They just did it from their desk through Outlook. It was useful to see how long a room was free for if you needed it for an impromptu meeting, however ("Next booking for this room is at 14:00 by Dave Smith (dsmith)" or whatever).

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#14

Post by j_s »

joshu wrote: post #7
bluthru wrote: post #3

There might be a market for an e-paper based version of this that shows an entire day or week of schedule.

I wish there were larger eink displays available for hacking.

32" was exhibited back in June; not so much 'available for hacking' though:

http://www.einkgroup.com/news.php?recordId=526

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#15

Post by jrockway »

100timesthis wrote: post #6
bluthru wrote: post #3

There might be a market for an e-paper based version of this that shows an entire day or week of schedule.

thiefs are going to love it

If I were going to steal stuff from my office, I'd probably grab a couple of the 16-core workstations before disassembling the wall to get a $100 e-ink conference room schedule.

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#16

Post by nkozyra »

jrockway wrote: post #15
100timesthis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thiefs are going to love it

If I were going to steal stuff from my office, I'd probably grab a couple of the 16-core workstations before disassembling the wall to get a $100 e-ink conference room schedule.

I assume he meant broadcasting current location. I don't think that's the actual application here anyway, but it's a real concern that thieves exploit via FB/Twitter announcements all the time.

For the office, though, not really a concern.

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#17

Post by dag11 »

I made something very similar using an Arduino Ethernet (using Power Over Ethernet). For the same reasons you mentioned, I totally recommend your way over mine; the Arduino was super expensive, and doing the HTTP myself was more work than it should be.

http://drewgottlieb.net/2014/03/02/opensource-event-display....

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#18

Post by zsupalla »

atmosx wrote: post #2

Sorry, spark.io is down and I'm not sure what it is: A dev-board? Why not use an RPi instead of an arduino for something like this? costs ~ 25-35 USD (depends on model) + a WiFi dongle and you can write code in Ruby/Python?!

Actually it's not down, just needs a www (the link on the site points to https://spark.io, which doesn't resolve, but https://www.spark.io works fine)

Re: Show HN: A Google Calendar Door Sign

#20

Post by Everlag »

zsupalla wrote: post #18
atmosx wrote: post #2

Sorry, spark.io is down and I'm not sure what it is: A dev-board? Why not use an RPi instead of an arduino for something like this? costs ~ 25-35 USD (depends on model) + a WiFi dongle and you can write code in Ruby/Python?!

Actually it's not down, just needs a www (the link on the site points to https://spark.io , which doesn't resolve, but https://www.spark.io works fine)

Thanks for pointing that out, I tried following the author's link and assumed it had gotten the HN hug.
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