
Google is replacing conference room paper schedules with solar-powered LCD's, updated via 802.15 - andreyf
http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/articles/radish.html?
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ChristianK
Umm ... why do you need conference room schedules on the conference rooms?
I've never worked anywhere that needed that.

How a "zero impact" policy of "look it up on your computer/phone"?

(Neat device though; there are other electronic sign age applications that I
can imagine it being useful for).

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litewulf
Meeting rooms can change, but if you have a regularly scheduled meeting you
will go there out of habit. Another thing is I've had my meetings bumped to a
different room (particularly if I reserve a large room but have few attendees)

(Not all engineers carry their laptops to all meetings.)

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sobriquet
Didn't they give everyone Android phones last year? Shouldn't that interface
with Google Calendar pretty well?

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litewulf
Yes. My phone is associated with my personal account and not my company one
though.

Besides, the system predates the phones.

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proee
I made a pretty sweet graphing weather monitor using this screen. Plots the
indoor and outdoor temperature and of course doesn't use any batteries when
it's idle. I packaged it up in a 1" thick display and have it hanging on my
wall. Data is also stored onto an SD card in CSV for archiving.

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thorax
You have any more details on how you put it all together?

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proee
I should take the time to put it on the web. My degree is in electrical
engineering and so I went all out and designed the pcb and all the goodies
from scratch. It also has an integrated capacitive touch screen that I
integrated into the PCB so that I can change modes by simply pressing on part
of the screen. I think it would make for a pretty sweet open source project
since the display could be pretty universal and the wireless sensor could
monitor lots of things beside temperature. It would make for a wicked
seismograph project....

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misterbwong
_Aaron thought to himself, "If only there was a inexpensive device that could
display the room reservations, we'll save all that paper ...."_

seems like an interesting side project but i can't shake the feeling that, at
least in this context, the solution is being over-engineered. i mean...isn't
this what whiteboards are for?

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andreyf
The video points out that there are 2200 conference rooms, so while using
white boards will save paper, but doesn't address the manpower needed to keep
them up-to-date, nor the expenditure on dry-erase markers (not to mention the
PR this kind of project gets you in all the right places).

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anirudh
Microsoft already has that and they are much better, it syncs with Exchange
and so on.

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warfangle
Yeah, but uh.. Google doesn't use exchange ;)

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andreyf
I noticed that this is almost a year old - does anyone have any updates?

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litewulf
...it works...?

(I believe the system is not being expanded due to time/money/whatever
constraints though.)

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cdibona
A previous poster got it right, we all have androids, and the calender program
works fine, as does the email alerts. As a side note, the radishes (that's
what they were called) we're tied into google calender and worked really well.

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1010011010
Not all of us have paired our androids with our google.com accounts, and some
folks simply refused their gift phone.

I wish we had radishes in my offices. Too bad they're not available anymore.

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ghshephard
Say what you will about how lame Microsoft Exchange is - the one advantage to
it is that pretty much every Mobile Device in the world (that wants to have a
market) - can bring up the Calendar in it - and give you a reminder as to what
room you need to be in.

I don't see how the paper solution ever worked anyways - I can't tell you the
number of times I've reserved a conference room 10-15 minutes before, hoping
someone wasn't at the same time as me.

I think this is as much a commentary on Google Calendar, and how negatively
MicrosoftExchange has impacted standards around calendaring, as it is on the
cool 802.15 hack.

~~~
1010011010
"pretty much every Mobile Device in the world"? I don't think that's true.

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megaduck
It's great to see 802.15 getting a little bit of press. It's fantastically low
power, got pretty good range, and the throughput isn't bad. Far better than
802.11 for these kinds of devices.

For anyone who wants to play with 802.15, I strongly recommend getting your
hands on some Sun SPOTs. I've been playing with one of the dev kits, and
they're an amazingly hackable platform.

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quoderat
The age of ubiquitous computing is finally arriving, though we no longer call
most of them "computers" anymore -- at least, not most people.

Like with AI, we keep defining down what is a "computer" and what's not as we
cease to notice their advance.

And, heck, maybe one day the paperless office will come to pass. In 2500 or
so.

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ph0rque
We investigated cholesteric LCD screens when I was with i-conserve. Their
energy use wasn't as low as e-inks, if I recall correctly, but you could buy a
dev kit, as well as the actual screens, for a much more reasonable price.

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jeremyw
Hmm, isn't Ruby an unapproved language inside Google? (i.e. not one of C/C++,
Python, Java or Javascript.)

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jhawk28
Where can I get one? Need to get my company to do the same thing.

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jodrellblank
Drop the solar panel; meeting rooms are full of hot air - there must be enough
temperature differential across the door to power a Sterling Engine or a small
computer...

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budwin
they had paper schedules?

~~~
1010011010
Admins would print out the google calendar for the room and tape it up, to be
helpful. It's not like the schedule was kept on paper, just printed on it.

