MIT's Bathroom Server

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Some of the undergrads wired Random Hall's (an undergraduate dorm) bathroom system up to the net so that you can visit http://bathroom.mit.edu and see which stalls on which floors are vacant, and if they're in use, how long whoever's been in there. It's a pretty good idea-- you can scout your stall from your dorm room, and watch it to make sure nobody's taken a s$#% there recently."

Comments

These kids are too smart...

[tulare]

Hehe. I mean, this could get interesting. Imagine what pranks you could pull - the most obvious would be to "cheat" the sensors so that the casual user would think that all the bathrooms are in use at some critical time - say 7am on finals week!
Now waiting to hear the Beowulf joke...

Alright!

[Auckerman]

For peats sake, Michael, you Slashdotted someones bathroom. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Not sure if I like this...

[Mr. Neutron]

So, if I've been wanking for the last 20 minutes, the whole world gets to know about it?

Check the Random Hall Laundry Server

[cerulean]

if bathroom.mit.edu is slashdotted, you can look at Random Hall's laundry server instead.

good ol' Random. It's too bad there's no webpage yet about Mjolnir, the homemade big-ass speaker built from a linear induction motor from a dishwasher-sized hard drive, a cone of sheet metal, and a cabinet of medium-density fiberboard.

what a bunch of 31337 H4X0R5

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

As if it wasn't enough crap on the net already!

The Wired House

[pausz]

Check out Icepick.com. They wired their entire house onto the net, including their:

1. Doorbell usage
2. Frontdoor camera
3. Trashbin scanner
4. Cat tracker
5. Microwave usage
6. Fridge openings and temperature
7. Phone usage
8. and yes: Toilet usage

They measure how often the toilet gets flushed, and for how long (I guess you can work out statistics on "difficult flushing jobs" :-). They also measure the temperature in the place; around 14.5 C (58.1 F). Not really a place you want to hang out for too long...

Our Bathroom Server

[jimatjtan]

Wow. We weren't ready for Slashdot. We knew that our server couldn't take more than a handful of requests at once, and were planning on fixing that before sending anything off to Slashdot.

I moved the IP address to a faster machine that performs proper caching of the generated images, etc, so this one should have absolutely no problem handling the load (assuming that our building's network can take it).

Don't forget to try out the finger interface, much preferred by all here in the dorm. "finger @bathroom.mit.edu" to see it.

One of these days we'll get around to putting up a page describing how the hardware and software works for both that and our friendly laundry server.

jim@jtan.com, for Random Nerds

the dread DoS attack

[StandardDeviant]

(denial of shitting)

seriously, there is such a thing as trusting your remote sensors too much... (the main reason spysats haven't replaces human intelligence sources)

Hacked

[yusing]

As I write, one stall has been "in use" for 47 minutes.

Somebody better go check for either a body, or an alligator clip....

FP!

[sharkey]

Great, now the cry of "First Dump!" will echo up and down the dorm halls.