AAMALIAA

“

The desire for fulfilling work — a job that provides a deep sense of purpose, and reflects our values, passions and personality — is a modern invention. … For centuries, most inhabitants of the Western world were too busy struggling to meet their subsistence needs to worry about whether they had an exciting career that used their talents and nurtured their wellbeing. But today, the spread of material prosperity has freed our minds to expect much more from the adventure of life.

We have entered a new age of fulfillment, in which the great dream is to trade up from money to meaning.

”

– How to Find Fulfilling Work | Brain Pickings

“Dear niece - on your 8th birthday,
As a future woman in technology, I want so much more for you than I can articulate. Hopefully, things will have seen some change when you are ready to make this world your own. If that is not the case, here is what I wish for you, for every young woman, and for this industry…”

–

To a Future Woman In Tech | @bitchwhocodes

Naturally, as a female—not to even mention, a minority—developer, Stacey Mulcahy’s letter really resonated with me. What really hit me, though, is to what extent each of her individual points relate to my own experiences… and the fact that it really took reading her note to find myself looking back on some experiences that seemed okay at the time now really leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I suppose I have no choice but to be a trailblazer for now but can only hope that things will change sooner than later.

“Frank’s understanding of what a producer does is true to what it really is, that a producer ensures the physical manifestation of intellectual property,” Keith says. “However we arrive at the final goal, whether it be by me playing instruments, adding things, adding insight, talking to Frank, or supervising every single occurrence of his voice on the record: This is producing on the high level. This is my opportunity to produce on the Quincy Jones level.”

– Om’Mas Keith, The Chosen One - Village Voice

Yeah, I know. It’s been a while… like 6 months… but I’ve finally finished the first iteration of my Arduino/Pi-Powered Bathroom Vacancy Light!

Here’s PART I.
If you haven’t read it yet… you should, otherwise the rest of this post won’t make any sense.

THE RESEARCH
Since last May, I’ve discovered the Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized Linux computer, and Pusher, an easy way to incorporate real-time updates into web-connected projects. I decided that the Pi would be a great substitute for the second Arduino that was originally going to receive signals and trigger the light in my bedroom and Pusher would act as a good notification system that both devices could easily access (and prevent me from having to bother with a pointless database table).

THE TOOLS

  • mini breadboards
  • jumper wires
  • resistors
  • LEDs

THE PROCESS
First, I figured out the Arduino bit. After reading a couple of chapters of this intro to arduino book, I was able to piece together a sketch that utilizes the WiFly to post data (a 1 if the door is closed, 0 if it is open) to a page on my server when triggered by a magnetic reed switch that is attached to the bathroom door.

Next, I coded the page hosted on my server in php. It utilizes the PHP Pusher client library (found here) to forward the message posted to the page by the Arduino via Pusher.

Finally, I set up the Pi (with wifi adapter) to run a background python script that is subscribed to the same Pusher channel using the python library (found here). When the bathroom door is closed, the Arduino posts a “1” to my server, the PHP then uses that to trigger a Pusher message, which is then picked up by the Pi’s python script. When the Pi receives a “1”, it turns its LED on, and vice versa. Done.

NEXT STEPS…
If/when I choose to do more with this project, these are the first things that I might try to tackle:

  • throw my code on github!
  • make an awesome enclosure for the Raspberry Pi with an airplane-style light fixture
  • get rid of Pusher and figure out how to host my own websocket connection
  • collect all notifications in a database so I can easily graph bathroom usage over time, average bathroom visit length, peak times, etc. (my roommates may not be too thrilled about this idea, shhhh!) :D