Ever wish your home or office had plane-style occupancy lights so you know when the toilet is in use? Some crafty hackers in Tokyo made this dream into a reality.
Their attractive setup incorporates a motion sensor in each bathroom hooked up to a wireless Arduino board. The board transmitted the room’s occupancy state to an array of LEDs that could be mounted to a wall and show anyone the current status of the bathrooms on three floors of the building.
This build was very specific to their office arrangement, and there are a lot of ways you could go about tackling it, but it’s great inspiration for anyone in need of a fun and practical project (or who is sick of toilet interruptions). Check out the source link for more details on how they did it.
Loftwork Womens’ Toilet Sensor Project [Freaklabs via Hackaday]
Comments
3 responses to “Monitor Toilet Occupancy With An Arduino”
i suggested web cams but the idea wasn’t taken up by management.
Why use infrared when you could do what every other bathroom occupancy sensor does and detect when the door is locked? If it’s locked, it’s occupied. Easy.
I’ve actually made one of these for parties from an old traffic light my local salvage shop was selling for $35. I had it tied to a small reed switch on the door. Red – Occupied, Green – Vacant, and after it went to occupied to vacant, it was on amber for 2 minutes for proceed at caution.
I did it with the raspberry pi and some relays to switch the 240V input to the lights…. very much overkill but the price was about the same if I had done it with an arduino. Plus I have plans to make it wireless etc.