This project aims to solve the problem of people walking half way across the office only to find a room they want to use is occupied, then either waiting in line or returning to their desk.
The solution is a minimal web page which can be consulted anonymously before making the trek. Think of it as event-driven IO for physical spaces.
The app is designed to be used transiently and anonymously.
Each doors' status, open or closed and for approximately how long, is updated in real time for desktop and mobile browsers.
If using a compatible web browser (Safari, Chrome, and possibly others), a checkbox will appear next to each door. Checking this box will cause a desktop notification to appear whenever the door is open. These work as long the site is open in a tab, even if the browser window is hidden. This preference will be remembered until the users' next visit.
If you're using Safari, desktop notifications should work out of the box. Chrome may require you to first visit chrome://flags and enable "Rich Notifications," then chrome://settings/content and select either "Allow all sites to show desktop notifications" or "Ask me when a site wants to show desktop notifications (recommended)."
The site stores a single cookie for each checkbox. We plan to move the site to SSL in the near future. It does not use Google Analytics or any other tracking software.
We designed a device consisting of a microcontroller connected to a pair of magnetic reed switches (the kind used in security systems).
Digispark was chosen for this because they were deemed inexpensive enough to throw into a wall forever and I had been a backer on Kickstarter. It worked out really well, but one could probably use any Arduino compatible board with only minor changes to the sketch.
The device is connected via USB to a computer running the Door Agent (ruby). The Door Agent handles passing information about the doors' states from the device to the app. The app is a static site hosted on Amazon S3. It's built in jQuery, Bootstrap, Moment.js and uses Pusher for instant updates.
At Boundless, one of these devices is installed in the server room and is responsible for the Gutenberg conference room's door. Another is connected to the Mac mini behind the dashboard screen by the engineering team's couches and is responsible for both bathrooms.
- We're still susceptible to the thundering herd problem.
- Fork it
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature') - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature) - Create new Pull Request