I made a few small upgrades here and there to the space today with help from Jack and Mike.
The first upgrade was changing from painter’s tape to old hard drive magnets to hold the camera and raspberry pi to the Makerbot 3D printer! Now it’s much easier to remove and re-position when the 3D printer goes on a road trip.
The next upgrade was adding another raspberry pi just inside the inner door behind the snack rack. There are now at least 4 pi’s doing various things around the space like web cams and even the front door lock! This newest pi’s job is to monitor the magnetic reed switch attached to the door frame as it’s turned on and off by the magnet that’s attached to the door. Each time the door changes “status” it will update our makerspace’s status on our public Space API. We can then use Javascript on our website to show an “OPEN” or “CLOSED” sign on our main page so people can quickly see if we are currently open or closed without having to check the cameras. We can do lots of other things in the future as well such as playing a welcome message to the first person that opens the door: “Welcome back, it’s been X hours and X minutes since the last person left.” etc.
Email us if you have an idea for something we can do with our new open/closed status other than showing it on the website.