Another great use of shields for creative electronics especially for  offices and shared flats is the toilet hack that we created during an internal hackathon event at the office.

Well, it most certainly is very useful: who doesn’t know the situation when you really need the toilet only to find that it is - occupied. Again. But those times are over now. Your mobile phone becomes even more useful and indispensable as the toilet hack app enables you at any given time to see right from your seat if the toilet is occupied or not. If your workmate is taking too long, just use the app and the toilet hack knocks the door for you.

What is needed to bring it to life? Use the Spark Core Microcontroller and the according shield made by us. Further ingredients are: some cables, a tilt sensor, a little solenoid motor and something to hold the motor.

Attach the tilt sensor to the shield where it says lock and the motor where it says knock. Then just get creative and build something to hold the motor in place to knock at the door; we used a styrofoam block for it, made a hole for the motor and just taped it to the door.

Find all source files in the project gallery!