Overview
Within a growing company, it can be hard to find an open restroom. We pride ourselves on being problem-solvers, so we created an experiment to solve our real-life problem.
Business Case
Tracking Physical Space Changes
With this experiment, it shows how common deficiencies in public spaces can be improved with digital solutions. The use of sensors in this scenario was able to track physical changes in an environment that is connected to a digital interface. This use can be vital in other applications including home security, door statuses, physical changes in restricted areas (i.e. museums), etc. It can also provide triggers for real space analytics, imagine Google Analytics for your office or home.
The Experiment
Checking Availability Without Leaving Your Desk
In a crowded office spread out over almost 10,000 sq ft, getting up the use the bathroom and finding out it’s occupied can be both a waste of time and straight up frustrating. With a Swift Mac OS X app, a Node.js server, a couple of Raspberry Pis, physical door sensors, and an innovative Slack integration, we developed a system to let each employee know if there’s a bathroom available and if so, which specific one was open.
Technology Overview
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Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi, a revolutionary IoT device, communicates between our door sensors and our application to identify when a bathroom is occupied. -
Node.js Node.js allowed us to quickly build an API to integrate our IoT device, Raspberry Pi, with our custom built Swift Mac OS X application. -
Swift To understand which restrooms were open and which were not, we created this custom application, to provide a visual menu on our computers for restroom availability.