I need some kind of specialized remote visual signalling device for work. I’ll explain what I need it for:
Person A mans a reception desk. When clients come in for person B, person A can hit a switch that illuminates a flashing light in person B’s workspace. Person B notices the light and pushes a ‘clear signal’ button that stops the light flashing and also signals somehow (maybe with another little light on person A’s control panel) that the signal has been seen and is being acted on. Now person B goes over to meet clients (these clients do not have appointments, they need to see person B for approx 5 mins, and more of whom may or may not be coming in behind the first) and person A does not have to push the signal again unless clients start backing up (i.e. person B has finished with all the clients he had waiting and has returned to his workspace). Oh, and it has to be wireless, as my place of business will not let me tear up walls to install new wiring.
I’ve have no luck on google. Anybody ever hear of something like this?
Phone is what they are using now - but we get so many clients coming that they are phoning every 20 seconds. Also, when we are on the line with some other thing they cannot get through.
•Arduino
•Some wire
•A few switches
•LED’s
You’ll just need to hire a mini-nerd for a few hours to program the logic and lay the wires for you.
Alternatively, you could go through a straight software solution on your office’s network, but that’s likely to be fragile across OS updates and viruses and all that junk, to say nothing of being more expensive to implement.
Indeed, but the effects could be mitigated. The work here is quite technical in nature and having to stop what you’re doing to answer the phone when someone (person B) is already over there doing the work leads to mistakes not to mention irritability. If they could just light a lamp, it could be ignored until person B can leave to do the work and if person B could also clear the lamp (with an indication to person A that the signal has been seen and is being acted on) would help out immensely.
That Arduino might do it - but I’d rather have an off the shelf device if that’s possible. I am not sure that anyone where I live could design/program such a system. And if they can, they’d charge mega $$$ to do it.
Ideally, yes. However, everybody has a unique logon to the terminals and they auto-lockdown if there’s no activity for 5 mins. Person B is not always at his desk, so if person B is off doing something else and their terminal is locked down then no one will get the message. A light would signal to everyone in the lab no matter if they’re in front of a computer or not and if person B is not around/doing something else, then persons C thru F could take care of it.
In the software development world there are usually software builds running anytime someone checks in code. There have been hackers that have hooked up build errors to turn on lava lamps if there is an error. The basic setup uses X10 devices to turn power on and off to a plugged in device based upon a software trigger. Parts to build it all are less than $200 dollars and if you have someone who is software-minded they can probably build a little software program on the receptionist’s computer that turns the light on and off.
You could easily do exactly what you described by using X-10 controls. All it would take is two lamp modules and two controllers, one for each person. The lamps could be wired to go on together, or they could be set independently. If you can brave their website, there is an X-10 bundle for $12.99 that includes a lamp module, a wireless tranceiver, and a wireless wall switch controller. Two of these would be enough to get you going.
X-10 components are also sold on Amazon (sometimes under the RCA name), but it is usually much cheaper to buy one of the bundles.
Well, thanks everyone for your suggestions. Those X-10 things look like they’ll work no fuss no muss and they’re cheap enough to just buy to try out. I bought an extra to secretly hook up to my tv at home and annoy my GF
