Another state of the art people counting system would be ultra wideband. It can literally count the number of heartbeats in a room.
See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=adiUegDxZEs
Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#32Scotch tape. Those poor students couldn't afford duct tape!
These are CS students, not MEs.
Which is to say, heathens who have yet to accept our lord and savior Duct into their hearts. (And its latter day saint WD-40)
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#33UPL UPL UPL UPL
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally, you cannot just record people without their consent; but this also largely depends on the jurisdiction/situation. Almost nowhere (or actually nowhere?) are you allowed to set up a surveillance device into a space that is not public and it is not owned by you.
Public university labs are generally public as they're state property (in this particular case, UW Madison is a public state University). Further, recording video or pictures of people in public places is broadly legal in the US. There are only "presumption of privacy" restrictions which apply to places such as bathrooms and private property that is not visible from a public location (ex. a sidewalk). Obv. IANAL and…
By this logic the dorm room bathrooms at public universities are also public and I should be able to setup cameras /s
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#35Back in the 90's we used finger - IIRC it would tell you the last machine someone logged into, which could be in the lab
Someone wrote a script to finger everyone in the entire CS department and tell when the lab was busy, by counting people logged in.
This work fine, except for on intro courses where some labs had lots of non-CS majors in them.
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#36> It then set the name of a channel to the results (either 1-person-in-upl or X-people-in-upl), which others could check. I'm not suggesting you don't do this, but you /could/ setup a speaker to play the classic remix of Steve Ballmer's "developers! developers!" whenever there are >=2 people in the room. On April 1st, of course.
I am, in fact, suggesting you do this.
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#37Back in the 90's we used finger - IIRC it would tell you the last machine someone logged into, which could be in the lab Someone wrote a script to finger everyone in the entire CS department and tell when the lab was busy, by counting people logged in. This work fine, except for on intro courses where some labs had lots of non-CS majors in them.
I had finger running on login to `finger stacy` I was at SDSU on a very large SunOS system and she was at a private school and I assume that computer was a bit more limited.
`Finger Stacy` would run every minute and typically be running for 15 minutes max... that is until I moved into the dorms and my machine was online all the time.
A few weeks go by and I get an email from the SDSU admin requesting that I stop fingering stacy as it was bothering the other Sysadmin. I remarked with a grin that all I was trying to do was in fact try to `name of the command` and they promptly deleted the script from the account.. It still makes me smile as I write this.
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#38I built a similar system for my school’s CS club. I considered using a door sensor, but the eventual solution I settled on was a light sensor, because it’s almost always true for us that the lights are on iff the door is open.
This way, we don’t need to mount anything on the door, we just have a microcontroller plugged into one of the machines.
Our previous solution was a webcam that pointed to the lights that did a similar thing (implemented by someone before my time) but then it stopped working due to some driver issues, and I didn’t want to spend time investigating them.
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
even the physics labs i worked in looked like this
The physics computer lab in Chamberlin Hall at UW in the 90's was a secret treasure trove of idle NeXTstation Turbo machines in an almost always empty room cooled to near refrigeration temperatures. I used to light up at least half of that room to run distributed simulations. There's probably still a 30 year old key to that lab in a junk drawer somewhere. Eventually I realized that it just made sense to suck it up an…
In my university you could technically use any computer but must ensure that your code would work/compile on lab PCs cause that's where TAs would check it. As a result, during labs most people would just use computers there(too much hassle otherwise)
Re: Overengineering a way to know if people are in my university's CS lab
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
even the physics labs i worked in looked like this
The physics computer lab in Chamberlin Hall at UW in the 90's was a secret treasure trove of idle NeXTstation Turbo machines in an almost always empty room cooled to near refrigeration temperatures. I used to light up at least half of that room to run distributed simulations. There's probably still a 30 year old key to that lab in a junk drawer somewhere. Eventually I realized that it just made sense to suck it up an…
I went through community college about 6 years ago. And they still had bona fide computer labs with in-person tech support.
Computers were also ubiquitous in places like the coffeehouse, the library, practically every classroom, etc. And, of course, there were ubiquitous WiFi and USB charging ports, so that students with BYOD could get by (although WiFi was often overloaded and contentious.)
Within the main computer lab I was using, there was also a networking hardware lab, with genuine Cisco equipment such as routers and switches. The Cisco certification prep classes would go in there and do experiments on the hardware, so that students could get accustomed to seeing it in action, however outdated it may be.
The lab itself was chock-a-block with both Apples and Windows PCs, as well as scanners and printers available, and even headphones you could borrow from the desk attendant. You'd need to sign in and sign out. There were strict rules about silence and not leaving your station unattended. There was always space for more users and a generally relaxed atmosphere, where people could feel comfortable studying or doing homework.
I believe that there was also an A/V lab where students could get access to cameras and recording equipment, as well as software for that kind of thing.
The library, in addition to allocating lots of space for Windows PCs and Apples, would also loan out Chromebooks to any student, and I believe they had other things for loan, such as WiFi hotspots, for kids who couldn't afford to carry around their own Internet.
There were also Tutoring Centers, such as the Math one, where most of the desks featured a computer where you could log in to your collegiate account, and access your online course materials.
And the Testing Center was essentially a big computer lab, with cameras and in-person proctors monitoring it. It was partnered with Pearson and CompTIA, so I took more than one certification exam in there.
There is a fully-staffed IT Help Center on campus, so during office hours, you could count on a 1:1 in-person interaction to help you get logged in, debug your device's WiFi, or whatever.
Despite having a great computer setup in the comfort of my own home, and plenty of online courses on my schedule, I still appreciated the immersion of collegiate computer labs, and especially the relaxed coffeehouse access, where I could use Apple systems to work on my English homework and essays.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, all this went topsy-turvy, and a lot of these labs closed down, or took extreme health precautions, and of course, a lot more classes went online-only. But I was done with classes by that time.