Schlagwort: toilet

  • Toilet Tracker: automated poo-spotting, no cameras

    Toilet Tracker: automated poo-spotting, no cameras

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    It might be that I am unusually particular here, but there is nothing (absolutely NOTHING) that upsets me more than dirty toilets. Yes, I know this is the epitome of a pampered-person’s phobia. But I have nightmares — honest, actual, recurring nightmares — about horrible toilets, and I’ll plan my day around avoiding public toilets which are likely to be dirty. So this project appealed to me enormously.

    Obi-Wan and the Worst Toilet in Scotland

    Automating spotting that things are awry in a toilet cubicle without breaching privacy is really tricky. You can’t use a camera, for obvious reasons. Over at Hackster.io, Mohammad Khairul Alam has come up with a solution: he uses a Raspberry Pi hooked up to Walabot, a 3D imaging sensor (the same sort of thing you might use to find pipes behind studwork if you’re doing DIY) to detect one thing: whether there are any…objects in the toilet cubicle which weren’t there earlier.

    From a privacy point of view, this is perfect. The sensor isn’t a camera, and it doesn’t know exactly what it’s looking at: just that there’s a thing where there shouldn’t be.

    The Walabot is programmed to understand when the toilet is occupied by sensing above seat level; it’s also looking closer to the floor when the cubicle is empty, for seat-smudges, full bowls, and nasty stuff on the floor. (Writing this post is making me all shuddery. Like I said, I really, really have a problem with this.) Here’s a nice back-of-an-envelope explanation of the logic:

    There’s a simple Android app to accompany the setup so you can roll out your own if you have an office with an upsetting toilet.

    Learn (much) more over at Hackster — thanks to Md. Khairul Alam for the build!

    Website: LINK

  • Tired of queuing for the office toilet? Meet Occu-Pi

    Tired of queuing for the office toilet? Meet Occu-Pi

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    This is the story of Occu-Pi, or how a magnet, a Raspberry Pi, and a barrel bolt saved an office team from queuing for the toilet.

    Occu Pi Raspberry Pi toilet signal

    The toil of toilet queuing

    When Brian W. Wolter’s employer moved premises, the staff’s main concern as the dearth of toilets at the new office, and the increased queuing time this would lead to:

    Our previous office had long been plagued by unreasonably long bathroom lines. At several high-demand periods throughout the day we’d be forced to wait three, four, five people deep while complaining bitterly to each other until our turn to use the facilities arrived. With even fewer bathrooms in our new office, concern about timely access was naturally high.

    Faced with this problem, the in-house engineers decided to find a technological solution.

    Occu-Pi

    The main thing the engineers had to figure out was just how to determine the difference between a closed door and an occupied stall. Brian explains in his write-up:

    There is one notable wrinkle: it’s not enough to know the door is closed, you need to know if the bathroom is actually in use — that is, locked from the inside. After considering and discarding a variety of ‘creative’ solutions (no thank you, motion sensors and facial recognition), we landed on a straightforward and reliable approach.

    The team ended up using a magnet attached to the door’s barrel bolt to trigger a notification. Simply shutting the door doesn’t act as a trigger — the bolt needs to lock the door to set off a magnetic switch. That switch then triggers both LED notifications and updates to a dedicated Slack channel.

    Occu-Pi Raspberry Pi toilet signal

    For the technically-minded, Occu-Pi is a pretty straightforward build. And those wanting to learn more about it can find a full write-up in Brian’s Medium post.

    We’ve seen a few different toilet notification projects over the years, for example this project from DIY Tryin’ using a similar trigger plus a website. What’s nice about Occu-Pi, however, is the simplicity of its design and the subtle use of Slack — Pi Tower’s favoured platform for office shenanigans.

    Website: LINK

  • Man Creates 22K Gold Toilet Paper, Wants You to Pay $1-Million for a Roll

    Man Creates 22K Gold Toilet Paper, Wants You to Pay $1-Million for a Roll

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    According to its creator, „Toilet Paper Man“, this is the world’s most expensive toilet paper roll in the world. It’s a quality 3-ply toilet paper, made entirely from 22 carat gold throughout the roll – „as you use the toilet paper 22 carat gold flakes will fall onto the floor and your behind taking you to another level of sophistication.“

    0E5ZQQH

     

    It was just weeks ago that we were reminiscing about the wonders of colored toilet tissue, and then this morning while scrolling through our Instagram feed, we saw Kelly Wearstler post a photo of… wait for it… gold toilet paper!

    Wearstler accompanied the photo with the caption: „an unexpected moment of glamour.“

    Official Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/28/kelly-wearstler-gold-toilet-paper_n_3830698.html

    http://geekologie.com/2013/10/your-ass-isnt-worth-it-1-millionroll-gol.php