My Holiday Home Automation Project - Bathroom Reservation System

[Extreme-Z]

You must have a jam up septic tank

[TomTom]

Great idea! Very nice


Sent from my iPhone

[Ramymounir]

same here.. I am interested to know how you did this

[Blackbeard]

Did you ever post steps on how you accomplished this? I'd love to do something similar.

[macromark]

Note : I originally posted this on Reddit, where not everyone is familiar with HS and its capabilities. The feedback was very positive, and I wanted to share it with the HS community.

If you haven't already added this to the "Single Coolest.." thread, you definitely should! http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...=154435&page=3

[macromark]

I actually saw this on Reddit first: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomat...ject_bathroom/


Cool!!!

[sparkman]

I have something similar that I use for overnight house guests. We tend to have a lot of people staying over during the various holiday seasons and there's always a rush for one particular bathroom. In our case, if the bathroom is currently occupied, the person would press a button on the Squeezebox Radio that is in the bedroom they are using and it will notify them in sequence when the bathroom is free (based on the door opening). I like the SMS idea, so would be interested to know how you did that too.

Cheers
Al

[Raptor]

Wait, 56 people and 2 bathrooms!!!!

that's nearly 4 hours of bathroom time assuming that people only are in there for 2 mins twice a day!!!!

this is an awesome idea.

like S-F said, how did you do the SMS part?

[S-F]

- When guests arrived, they got notified by SMS that the home has a bathroom reservation system. By replying "P", they get added to a queue. A reply is sent back telling them how many people are in front of them.

How dd you accomplish this?

[sonypoolplr]

That is great! Thanks for sharing

[Jingoro]

Note : I originally posted this on Reddit, where not everyone is familiar with HS and its capabilities. The feedback was very positive, and I wanted to share it with the HS community.

Problem :
For Thanksgiving, I'm having 56 family members at my home. I only have two available bathrooms for their use. Last year, a long queue formed for the bathrooms, and one tended to be under utilized due to it being on a different floor.

My Home Automation Components :
- HSM-200 Z-Wave Motion Detectors w/ status lights
- Insteon Switchlinc Dimmers for Bathroom Lights
- Insteon Hidden Door Sensors
- HomeSeer w/HSTouch (wall mounted tablets throughout house).

Home Automation Solution (took 4-5 hours to make):
- Using the bathroom motion sensors, light status, and door sensors, HomeSeer knows the occupancy of each bathroom.

- When guests arrived, they got notified by SMS that the home has a bathroom reservation system. By replying "P", they get added to a queue. A reply is sent back telling them how many people are in front of them.

- In HomeSeer, whenever a bathroom becomes unoccupied, an event gets triggered to check the queue and to text them (via the SMS plugin) notifying which bathroom is available for them to use. Alternatively, you can use IFTTT with the Android SMS channel for similar results

- For younger kids without phones, they can use any of the wall-mounted Android tablets. In HSTouch, I created a special "bathroom" screen showing all of the kids pictures (remember, it's all extended family). Younger kids immediately jump to the front of the queue. A notification will show up telling them which one to go to, and wait outside... HomeSeer will direct them to which bathroom has been occupied the longest. (which may not always be the best one, but without knowing what people are doing inside there...) :-)

Result :
The new system ended up being a smashing success. Getting discretely notified when it's your turn to go to the restroom allowed people to mingle longer and not break conversation. Younger kids got directed to a bathroom quickly, and potential minimized any dramas of accidents. However, the older grandparents, who are technology averse, thought it was all a bit too much :-)

Future expansion ideas :
- Release a puff of fragrance every time somebody does a #2 (probably can make this based on the duration of how long they were in there)

- For the young kids, give better directions on how to get to the assigned bathroom

- Figure out which bathroom will be available next, and text the next person ahead of time so that they get to the assigned restroom as it is being unoccupied (to minimize bathroom downtime)