Is the Toilet Free? An At Desk Indicator For Your Office Bathroom Powered by a Raspberry Pi @Raspberry_Pi #piday #raspberrypi
Made by Many has developed an at-desk indicator for their office bathroom using a raspberry pi, pi t-cobbler breakout, and more! The indicator, made from LEDs, signals whether the restroom is occupied or unoccupied and is visible throughout the office. Not only does it prevent useless walks from their desks to the bathroom throughout the day, it also provides employees with a sense of privacy often lost to the office environment. Pretty neat!
Fiona and Raffi began fiddling with a Raspberry Pi to see if they could come up with the bare essential hardware & software. From there (with my near-non-existent knowledge of electronics) I was able to extrapolate on what they had created to add a few more switches and LEDs. We soon had a circuit that resembled the end result. We prototyped…
And we had some software that updated the website. It worked brilliantly.
I designed a box to house the Pi and some strip LEDs that would sit on the wall outside the loo.
Thus far it had all been hacked-together prototypes so we needed to formalise what we’d done. I wrote some new software that in principle was: show a green light if there is at least one toilet free, otherwise show red. Then when a change is seen, log it and update the website. Ben and I ordered some components to create the V2 circuit, and tested it on a breadboar.
Then transferred and soldered it to some stripboard…
Adafruit Assembled Pi T-Cobbler Breakout for Raspberry Pi: Now that you’ve finally got your hands on a Raspberry Pi® , you’re probably itching to make some fun embedded computer projects with it. What you need is an assembled add on prototyping Pi T-Cobbler from Adafruit, which can break out all those tasty power, GPIO, I2C and SPI pins from the 26 pin header onto a solderless breadboard. This mini kit will make “cobbling together” prototypes with the Pi super easy. Designed for Raspberry Pi Model B Revision 1 or Revision 2. Read more!
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!