Internet of Bathrooms

Redditor “notbookies” had a small issue at his place of work in that a dozen people share a single bathroom. While probably sufficient on a…

Jeremy Cook
6 years ago

Redditor “notbookies” had a small issue at his place of work in that a dozen people share a single bathroom. While probably sufficient on a macro level, walking there only to find it occupied over and over was getting to be a bit of a nuisance. Naturally, he turned to electronic monitoring to solve this problem!

His solution comes in the form of an ESP8266 module, along with a magnetic sensor. When the door is open, it sends a signal to the module which can then generate a webpage, showing whether or not someone is in the bathroom based on if the door is open or closed. It also displays how long the door has been in a certain state, as well as stats on occupancy and vacancy.

While potentially useful, if the idea of having unknown electronics mounted to a bathroom door seems slightly unnerving, this fact isn’t lost on notbookies. He admits that the project might be pointless, but “that would be a stupid reason not to try something” (and the parts were extremely cheap). The steps to make this project are outlined here as personal notes, though they could be quite helpful if you want to do something similar. Code is available on GitHub.

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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