Automated Dorm Room Causes a School Inquiry

First time accepted submitter ElectronicHouseGrant writes "Freshman Derek Low rigged up his Berkeley dorm room with something he calls B.R.A.D., which is short for 'Berkeley Ridiculously Automated Dorm.' The room includes automated lighting, drapes, music, motion detection, and more. He can control everything through voice recognition, but a wireless remote, his iPhone and his iPad are also in on the control party. Derek started the install on February 4 and finished just a few days ago."

Comments

School inquiry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I missed something, but since the headline said school inquiry, shouldn't there be some info about that either in the blurb or the article it's linking to?

Re:School inquiry?

[Matheus]

Ya... terrible title doesn't match summary or linked article. News at 11.

Re:School inquiry?

[jklovanc]

Here is a more complete article.

Re:School inquiry?

[terrab0t]

This discussion thread is only for those of us who do not read the article. There will be another post later that actually links to the article to allow those annoying fact checkers to join in.

Re:School inquiry?

[vlm]

Not very hard to guess the problem.

Take a look a the third or so pic on http://lab.dereklow.co/brad/ The one with the light switch hanging out of the wall as he screws around with the wiring. If he could have just stuck to plug in modules like everyone else, but no he has to go all amateur electrician... I love this quote "With no access to the circuit breakers of the dorms, the contacts and wiring inside the wall switch remains live even as I open and try to modify it.". This dude is the stereotype of nothing is more dangerous than a programmer with a screwdriver... damn...

Screwing around with the drapes might have pissed them off too. Worst case is losing some security deposit unless he can return it all exactly to original operation.

Oh and the fog machine. My dorm didn't allow gasoline and oil products in the rooms, to discourage people from putting their scooter in the room, or doing oil changes in the dorms. Maybe they're worked up about fog juice and treating it as automotive lubrication oil.

Re:School inquiry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Messing with the fixed wiring in a room that you do not own is not "initiative", especially when you can't turn off the power while you're working on it. In that case it's called "recklessness". Faulty contacts are a serious fire hazard, and unlike the stuff you just plug in, the installed wires do not simply revert back to safe when you move out.

Re:School inquiry?

[cayenne8]

Oh and the fog machine. My dorm didn't allow gasoline and oil products in the rooms, to discourage people from putting their scooter in the room, or doing oil changes in the dorms. Maybe they're worked up about fog juice and treating it as automotive lubrication oil.

Yeah, all dorms have rules...but they never really enforced any of them...at least not in my day at LSU.

I mean, we weren't supposed to have hot plates or anything to heat up food...we did. You weren't supposed to have kegs in your room....we did (after dorm crawfish boils, the left over kegs followed us into our room, as did the RA's that we befriended).

Hell, you weren't supposed to have women in your dorm room over night, but I know a guy who had his chick living with him (and his room mate) for a whole semester. Basically in our dorm...there could have basically been an ax murderer come out and take out a whole floor...and no one would have noticed till a week or so later when the smell got even worse that usual.

*sigh*..those were the days. I remember the 2 day poker/Bourré games we played on a table we'd stolen from a study room, and placed in the elevator....and just rode up and down playing all weekend straight....only taking breaks to pee, grab some food...and replenish the beer in the cooler.

Re:School inquiry?

[axlr8or]

He has a point, and so do you. You always have to assume there is power anyways. I was a maintenance man at a fab company for tractor trailers. We often had to work with the power on anyways. Heh, about 6 months ago my boss paid an electrician to come in and rewire a messed up network. After examining the system he determined what breakers were to be turned off. After working a few hours he began messing with some wires and BAM! Power went out. Someone plugged an extension cord into a receptacle 50 ft away and completed a circuit through the light bulb and he got nailed. He laughed it off and didn't get hurt. But even HE said never, never assume a wire is neutralized.

Re:School inquiry?

[Chris Mattern]

It's like a gun. You always assume a gun is loaded but you unload it before working on it. In both cases, it's dangerous enough that if you don't want *both* precautions, you're a fool.

Re:School inquiry?

[spikedvodka]

As the saying goes:
- There are Old Electricians
- There are Bold Electricians
- There are no Old Bold Electricians

Re:School inquiry?

[sribe]

Your skin resistance when dry is too high for current to be dangerous. The only way 110V is going to kill you is if you're playing with it while in the bathtub...

Bull. Fucking. Shit.

Connect one finger to hot and one to neutral, and experience first hand how much current flows, and the pain and muscle spasms it causes. Now imagine that flowing from one hand to the other across your chest, through your heart.

I don't know where the hell you got this horribly dangerous misinformation, nor how the hell it got modded informative, but please shut the hell up. 110V most certainly can kill people who are not wet, and is documented to do so.

The reason that kitchens and bathrooms are required to have GFCI is that the addition of water makes even minor leakage current from defective appliances potentially lethal.

Re:School inquiry?

[IorDMUX]

oltage against high resistance is known to produce large amounts of heat (that's how stove plates work)

No, not quite. Power dissipated (in this case the "heat") is V^2/R. Higher resistance means less power. Stove elements work by putting mains voltage across a fairly low resistance, causing plenty of current, power, and heat. In actuality, 110 Vrms is not enough to produce much in the way of a burn.

Now, you are correct about the bloodstream being a good conductor. It is quite rare that a live wire will directly contact the bloodstream, though -- but it does not need to. The resistance of human skin is non-linear, and is actually lower at higher voltages. Additionally, there is plenty of capacitance involved in the body's circuit*, meaning that the full impedance at 60 Hz is lower than just the DC resistance. If there is a route through the heart, and the "let-go threshold" has been exceeded, then even 110 V can be deadly -- no burns necessary.

*The human body model capacitance is only 150 pF, but this represents the body's capacitance to the outside world. The actual capacitance through a narrow layer of skin is many orders of magnitude higher, though I can't get a good source for the actual value.

Notice he's by himself

[commodore73]

During romantic mode.

/.ed

[wbr1]

Article appears to be slasdotted..and sparse per prior posts. Any better links?
Oh that's right.. unlike the submitter or the eds.. I can use google.
http://www.livescience.com/20048-ridiculously-automated-dorm-room.html
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2012/05/01/cal-student-creates-a-ridiculously-automated-dorm/
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-video-berkeleys-most-ridiculously-automated-dorm-room-ever-20120501,0,2225746.story

pick up routine

[ozduo]

"come up and see my BRAD" doesn't work for me!

Re:Great and all but...

[PRMan]

Land of the free, and all that...

ALS Residence Initiative

[Penguinshit]

The ALS Residence Initiative already built a paradigm-shift in skilled nursing care in Chelsea, MA. The Residence was built as part of the Leonard Florence Center for Living as a place for ALS/MS patients with severe disability to live with maximum independence and with the highest quality nursing care available.

The Residence was designed by my friend Steve Saling with his own long-term care requirements in mind. The building is stuffed with automation equipment from PEAC which enables people, who can only use their eyes to control a computer, to open doors, operate lights, call an elevator, or summon assistance (among other operations). The Residence is the first of its kind, and the ALSRI is committed to building these across the USA. The second facility is to be built near Atlanta, GA.

Consumer grade crapware?

[LoudMusic]

That just looks like a hodgepodge of cheap consumer crap he picked up at Home Depot and literally taped to the walls and ceiling of the dorm room. He even runs free apps on his Apple products to control that stuff.

Where's the fit and finish of quality hackery? Practically any geek with a spare couple of weekends could throw this together.

Re:Why do American Dorm rooms

[PeanutButterBreath]

always appear to be multiple occupants? I've always found that a bit weird.

It is to condition Americans to despise a) sharing and b) small living quarters, yielding a steady supply of cooperation- and organization-averse individualists who seek sprawl and thus fuel the real estate, automobile, & energy industries.

60 mA to the heart can be fatal

[l00sr]

Lethality of electric shock depends on way, way too many factors to make blanket statements such as above. For example, according to wikipedia, for a large contact area and dry skin, 5% of the population has a hand-to-hand impedance of 1,200 Ohms. 110/1200 ~ 100 mA, which is significantly above the 60 mA threshold for a fatal shock to the heart. 50% of the population are just about at the threshold. Also, broken skin, sweaty skin, duration of contact, etc. are all factors. This is also why you should never break the ground pin off of an electrical plug. Case in point: a Cleveland State prof. died in 2006 after touching a lamp with a broken-off ground pin.

Re:60 mA to the heart can be fatal

[sribe]

This is also why you should never break the ground pin off of an electrical plug.

Yep. Also, installing a 3-prong outlet onto an old 2-wire circuit with the ground disconnected presents the same hazard, just disguised so future users can't know about it without looking in the walls.

But a useful tidbit, installing a GFCI outlet in that situation is safe, and even code-compliant ;-)