Loo Log – Washroom Usage Monitoring

If you live in a house that has more people than washrooms you have probably come across the situation where you are waiting for one to free up. Sven has come up with a solution, use a microcontroller to capture usage information and graph it so that you can see what the typical usage patten is like! Have a look at the recent graphs for some additional details. 🙂

"This project is about nearly daily statistical analysis and reporting of loo usage. Ever wanted to know when is the best time to go to the bathroom? 😉 The goal of this project is to get an overview of the bathroom usage and to get an idea of the loo usage patterns. With the help of statistical analysis it should be possible to get the desired information on a mathematical foundation. For that purpose an electrical switch is attached to the bathroom’s door’s lock. When the door is locked the switch is closed thus closing a circuit and igniting "occupied" lights in the rooms. This information also flows to a microcontroller that registers the status change and writes this information together with a timestamp that comes from a radio controlled DCF77 clock module into a file on a USB storage. This file is being read into a database a web application server is connected with. A CherryPy web application server contains all the the logic to evaluate and report the desired information as flash charts."