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Freshman MIT Students Automate Dorm Room
Inessa writes "Two freshman MIT students have automated their dorm room, complete with a big red party button which generates an instant party. Their custom-engineered system is called MIDAS, the Multi-Function In Dorm Automation System. According to the MIT News office, "Gone are the light switches and glaring fluorescent lights of a typical dorm room. Zack Anderson and RJ Ryan's room has several lighting schemes, remote web access, voice activation, a security system, electric blinds and more ... With the touch of one red button, their dorm room becomes a rave. The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat.""
And I mean that in the good way, not in the bad at sports way.
This inculcation of curiosity and resourcefulness is what makes studying at MIT truly unique. No wonder it is one of the premier educational institutions in the world.
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they couldn't solve the "where do we get chicks from?" problem. or maybe, these oxygen gas bottles are of some use after all..
Why, when we were in college, we couldn't afford to have all of that expensive automation gear. We had to get up off of our asses and actually turn lights off on and on, and we liked it that way. In-room fridge? Hah! We were so poor, we had to keep a little piece of Velveeta frozen on the dorm room window sill, saving it up for our big Friday night celebrations. But tell that to kids today, and they won't believe you. No sir.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
in other words, how does it scale?"
It is cowardly, and a betrayal of whatever it means to be a Jew, to act as a white man
-James Baldwin
Why is it I get the feeling that there is a reason these guys have that much time on their hands?
Nice work and all that, but most decent parties at college include three staple ingredients
1) Alcohol
2) Women
3) Alcohol
Though alcohol appears twice this is on purpose, once to get you drunk enough to ask, then a woman to ask, the second to get her drunk enough to agree. Now an automated party system that achieved that... the guys would be millionaires by next Wednesday.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I bet their dorm room still smells like dirty laundry.
Hey, 1989 called, they want their party terms back...
What, MIT is co-ed now? Mortifying.
the "off" button.
Be sarcastic if you must, but their next upgrade is to integrate a chick magnet into the system. Activating 'party mode' by default spawns a Babe-Level Management Routine (BALMER), which controls the Magnet. Preset desired peak and sustained chick levels are set in the Application Data Layer, and MIDAS carefully manages the Chick Magnet to maintain the ambient babeness at the level desired for the activity. When the security cameras, IR sensors, or seismographs determine that levels are exceeded, the Magnet is taken off line or dropped to a lower power level (From "Ferrari" to "Porsche" all the way down to "Ford Fairlane").
It all looks very impressive on paper, but they're having trouble getting enough juice to those magnets, and as yet have been unable to give the BALMER anything but a dry run.
The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat."
Appearantly, these "freshmen" haven't been out of their dorm room since the early 90's
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Someone gets in through remote web access and continually makes it party mode.
sent from my slashdot browser.
I am pretty sure the same button inflates their "girlfriends" as well!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
You can watch a video here of it in action.
we had to keep a little piece of Velveeta frozen on the dorm room window sill
When I went to school, Velveeta hadn't been invented yet. We had to walk in all manner of weather conditions to the vetrinary science buildings, uphill both ways, and steal milk from the cows, which we then had to curdle in the bathroom sink. Only then could a Friday night celebration be had.
paintball
At a single voice command the door swings shut and locks, bars secure the window, the lights dim, room oxygen is reduced by 20% creating a lightheadedness, and the audio system repeats the phrase "Give in, you know you want me".
I'm not sure how other folks do it, but in my year in a dorm, I introduced my roommate to my girlfriend's roommate, and they seemed to get along well enough that by the end of the year, girlfriend and roommate had basically traded rooms.
Reality has a liberal bias
It's all a nice setup, but when happens when these kids have to move out of that dorm? (Due to a pile of dirty laundry growing legs and chewing on wires)
If they want, they don't have to move out for three years. On most halls at East Campus, you can squat your room as long as you want (except that they'll probably have to keep squatting it as a double).
I bet everything has been screwed or nailed in, modified and altered to accommodate all this equipment. Who allowed them to do this?
Joe Graham. ("Kids making illegal modifications to their rooms? I'm on it!")
Last time I checked you weren't allowed to mess around with dorm rooms.
At East Campus, you actually are allowed to mess around with dorm rooms. Murals are painted everywhere, and all sorts of cool shit happens. The building is so old that nobody cares anymore, except for the Cambridge Fire Department. And if you keep the room's door locked during inspection, they don't have to know about it.
Nice system and all, but -10 practicality. Maybe it would have worked better in a house or apartment. They should have worked more in how it looked and how it was to be set up instead of just building it.
Yeah, but by the time they live in a house or apartment, they won't have the free time to do this kind of stuff. Heck, next term they probably won't have that kind of time.
As a fellow resident of this dorm (East Campus, home of the disco dance floor, time traveler's convention, and numberous other widgets features here at some time) I feel qualified to call you both uniformed and a bit of an ass. :P
This degree of customization is quite common and encouraged here. The building was built in the 20s and its condition very much reflects that. For that reason students are allowed to do pretty much whatever they can get around the fire code. Many rooms feature lofted beds, weird paint schemes and odd lighting. The hallways are covered completely with student painted murals.
If they tear it down tomorrow (or Saturday since that was check-out for the summer) and leave big holes in the walls nobody would know the difference. If they leave it in the next residents will take it over since they'll be the same type of person. Also, most people live on the same floor for all four of their years, many staying in the same room.
My floor, 2E, features a lounge with a lofted couch, hacked together projection system, a water cooled media center, and a 16 processor Alpha (4x ES40) cluster in our kitchen.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
Advice from a mother to her college age, Boston-bound daughter:
"Never go out with an MIT student; they are horrible dates. More than
any other college men, they are only after one thing:
Sleep."
-mkb
Sorry, but I would not dump all MIT grads in the same bucket. They're just like anyone else - there are the folks who can't work with others and need to do things their own way, even when their way is the hard way, and then there are the truly brilliant and personal folks. I've worked with MIT grads at software companies and some of them have been simply amazing - although not the best. The absolute best architects and programmers I have worked with were the folks who picked up programming out of necessity on the job back when standards were only beginning to emerge, and loved the work so much they went to technical schools to immerse themselves in good programming and design courses. I suppose it comes down to experience and practicality; if all you know is theory you're not going to be any good in solving real-world problems.
I would not discount all MIT grads based on one negative experience you've had.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
...I'll build my own party button. With blackjack. And hookers.
I can see it now...
...but no, you're right of course, they'd come round... but I'm not sure the room will really help... and anyway, who's to say the Korean robot chick isn't a better long-term bet?
MIT guy: And check out my wired dorm! Playing "feel the energy"!
Girls: Collapse in helpless laughter
MIT guy: Wait! you can't laugh at me! Think of my huge earning potential!
-- 2 seconds utter silence --
Girls: Collapse in even more hysterical laughter...
Forget the party button and the blackjack.