That’s both cool and awful at the same time. Could have used something similar to this at my wife’s old office building. The sewer line wasn’t tilted enough so by the time anything made it to the main “stuff” would just stop about a foot away. Then it’d freeze. Rinse and repeat a few times and it would start to overflow.

Posted at 6:13 pm on Jul 27th, 2009 by barry99705

another reason why women are the root of all evil

Posted at 6:56 pm on Jul 27th, 2009 by Matt

That is what grinder pumps are for.

Posted at 8:23 pm on Jul 27th, 2009 by Adam Ziegler

This is great. It would be nice if you combined this with a webcam OUTSIDE the bathroom. This way it’s not illegal and you can see who goes in there, see when it got clogged and go have a “talk” with that person. Maybe you could have one in each stall so you know exactly which one went off and who did what.

Posted at 8:47 pm on Jul 27th, 2009 by yuppicide

I used to do maintenance in a grocery store. Womens restrooms are some of the most god-awful places on earth.

Posted at 8:58 pm on Jul 27th, 2009 by macona

Yeah… A more cost-effective setup would’ve been made entirely of cardboard, or even just regular paper.

A sign above each and every toilet allocated to females, saying: “Do NOT put tampons in the toilet.”

Posted at 11:08 pm on Jul 27th, 2009 by Onaka

ALERT ALERT! VAMPIRE’S TEABAG LAUNCHED! WARNING!

Posted at 1:15 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by Xargle

Nice. I’m not sure if an XBEE would be the best doh.

Posted at 3:20 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by Bertold

@onaka
They never work, you always get three or four women thinking “one won’t hurt” every day. Same as any other “Don’t ever do X” situation, it will be assumed that one more won’t hurt anybody, so long as nobody finds out.

Posted at 3:30 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by cynic

I’d like some build details like how he’s interfacing with the SMS service through python.

That’s just a nice pic with a story.

Posted at 3:52 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by Hackius

@hackius He’s not doing real SMS – he’s sending an email to his providers email-SMS gateway.

Posted at 5:03 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by grant

@Cynic –
Definately true. At my first job, I worked at a fast food restaurant. At the end of the night, I was one of the people who had to clean the restrooms. You wouldn’t believe how many times we had to take a plunger to the toilets in the ladies room, yet never a single problem in the mens.

Posted at 5:46 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by Chris

Ah, the noble profession of being a sh!t-house mechanic….

Posted at 6:32 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by TheKing1

In the plumbing business, I am told, those flushed tampons are known as ‘white rabbits’.

Posted at 6:39 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by angrydroid

wow this is just wretched lol.

Posted at 8:04 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by skitchin

And the Xbee can be easily replaced with $6.95 of cat5 wire making the whole project non special. Most places that have real automation have integration with all alarms in the building.

Honestly, using the zigbee stuff for the sake of it is silly, run a wire or give a real use for zigbee comms with a moving object.

Posted at 8:16 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by farthead

Upgrade to the paper sign: One tampon WILL clog the toilet, and alert our staff, who will want a word with you. You can either pay for sewage cleanup or do it yourself.

Then make sure you can follow up on your thread with the webcam solution in combination with the alert. One example should be all you need.

Posted at 11:10 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by nebulous

@hackius: I actually wrote a daemon in python that interfaces with a GPRS modem through telnet to deliver SMS messages. If you’re at all curious, source is on google code here: http://code.google.com/p/mmsmsd/. (fyi: not a programmer by trade, was actually my first attempt at coding python)

If I were to do it again, I’d ditch the all-in-one approach I took and have a daemon watching a spool directory that would have outgoing sms messages queued to it by whatever sort of interface you need (ie httpd). Works well as is though and has happily delivered over 4000 messages since I put it in production

Posted at 11:23 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by brent

brent said: has happily delivered over 4000 messages since I put it in production

That’s a lot of clogs…

Posted at 11:40 am on Jul 28th, 2009 by ReKlipz

@reklipz: Not the original person who did the zigbee work, my sms system isn’t to do with clogged toilets! ;)

Posted at 1:41 pm on Jul 28th, 2009 by brent

@adamZ,

if you look at the source code picture, the msg is “Tampon Alert – Grinder pump is clogged”. those white rabbits must be tough critters.

Posted at 1:54 pm on Jul 28th, 2009 by Nick

from xbee inmport xbee
where can we find xbee lib ?

Posted at 4:21 pm on Jul 28th, 2009 by tim

@nick…

Good catch!

I was involved with a project where the grinder pump can supposedly take a pair of shorts being flushed. With that said… is seems that certain “flush-ables” still can cause problem if they build up.

yuck.

Posted at 6:10 pm on Jul 28th, 2009 by Adam Ziegler

@adam even better then a grinder is a bar screen before the grinder….it requires allot of cleaning but it stops the evil things like flushable wipes and other fibrous things from cloging the cutter.

Posted at 7:34 pm on Jul 28th, 2009 by mike

how does it know its clogged? at my plant we have to take amp readings off the grinders, the only alarms are low and high water levels, waiting for those can lead to a burnt pump and a big bill.

Posted at 7:43 pm on Jul 28th, 2009 by mike

But really, where are women supposed to throw the tampons? They won’t carry their “handiwork” to the bin for others to see. So a garbage bin in a stall might work.

Posted at 11:10 am on Jul 29th, 2009 by MCscrewdriver

@mcscrewdriver: yes it goes in the trash.

this is very useful.

maybe another idea, using sound waves? depending on how much sound is transferred to the other end determines how clogged it could be?

Posted at 11:59 am on Jul 29th, 2009 by sunjester

The ONLY way to keep women from flushing tampons down the toilet is to provide an easy, clean discreet disposal system! Signs are totally ineffective because in most restrooms there is no hygienic alternative. Disposal receptacles mounted to the stall are disgusting–a breeding ground for harmful bacteria and possible blood borne pathogens!

Check out new single-use feminine care disposal bags dispensed from refillable units. The bags are biodegradable plastic, tie handled closure, pink on pink, scented and embedded with an antimicrobial additive. Products are thrown in the trash-not down the toilet.

Perfect solution to plumbing problems being used in facilities (and homes) across the USA!

Posted at 5:52 am on Jul 30th, 2009 by Ann Germanow

^ fucking palmface.jpg

Posted at 7:08 am on Jul 30th, 2009 by anon

Yeah it’s so much more discreet if a maintenance guy has to pull the tampon out of the drainage together with anything people did on top.
It’s simple physics, the thing is designed to absorb, put in in a drainage pipe and it’ll swell up and block it, that’s NOT discreet.

Posted at 12:38 am on Jul 31st, 2009 by Wwhat

Theres trash cans for a reason. yet I’m sure this will somehow continue happening. I would find out how flushes them and charge them cleanup or something.

Posted at 9:40 am on Aug 2nd, 2009 by Noah Woodward

Best wishes and keep posting.

Posted at 3:12 am on Aug 26th, 2009 by Viagra