The folks over at One Mighty Roar have been hacking their office lately, and there have been some pretty creative results! The latest development is this interactive office conference table.
The table itself is made of fine American walnut and is quite appealing, but they wanted it to be a bit flashier than that.
The center square of the table features the company logo lit up by RGB LED’s, and the whole thing lifts out of the table using a small hydraulic actuator. This reveals some power outlets and ethernet jacks, but unfortunately the current system doesn’t have any safety precautions to make sure it doesn’t close on cables…
If that wasn’t enough, they wanted to automate the whole thing too, so there are also ultrasonic range sensors underneath which can detect when people are present — the end goal is to have the LEDs change color depending on how many people attend a meeting. This is all controlled by an Arduino Uno — but we have to wonder, isn’t there a better way for detecting if people are sitting down? The project is far from done though, so there will be many more features to come.
One of their other cool office hacks includes their interactive office sign that is controlled both by SMS or web app.
The bottom view sort of has this
… ceiling cat=table Wall-E
is ready to do some up “up-skirting” …
look to it.
and has a special attachment ??
They use the Bell Gothic phone book font on their website. A “digital experience company” using a font intended for printing on cheap paper. The weird cuts on all the inside corners are designed so that ink bleeding would fill them in.
I meant Bell Centennial, designed in 1975, 38 years ago. Probably isn’t anyone over 25 at that company.
the relevance of the font used on their website seems to have escaped me here
He’s pointing out the irony of using a font expressly designed to fix a technical problem with printing on paper as the typeface for a company that unlikely to print anything on paper.
What kind of Hydraulic Actuator can be used ?
I hope they have some mechanical fail-safe so it can’t close when wires are connected.
People waste time on the dumbest things. Meetings are a big enough of a time suck without adding geeky distractions. Plus after you ooh and aah one time, the next bazillion times will be oh so “been there done that”. Just provide fresh pastry and have a actual need for a real-time face to face, and your attendees will be happy.