If you were to consider what the most important component of a hacker event might be, the chances are you’d pick something that’s part of the program, the ambiance, or the culture. But as the organizers of FOSDEM in Brussels found out, what’s really the most important part of such an event is the toilet paper.
If you can’t keep the supplies coming, you’re in trouble, and since they only had one key for the dispensers across the whole event, they were heading for a sticky situation. But this is a hacker event, and our community is resourceful. The folks on the FreeCAD booth created a model of the key which they shared via the Ondsel collaboration tools, while those on the Prusa booth fired up their Prusa XL and ran off a set of keys to keep the event well supplied.
Perhaps for many of us, the act of running off a 3D model and printing it is such a mundane task as to be unremarkable — and indeed the speed at which they were able to do it points to it being a straightforward task for them. But the sight of a bunch of hardware hackers saving the event by doing what they do best is still one to warm the cockles of our hearts. We’re fairly certain it’s not the first time we’ve seen a bit of clandestine venue hacking save an event, but perhaps for the sake of those involved, we’d better not go into it.
Whew! For a second there I thought I was going to read that they printed the toilette paper!
Be glad it wasn’t about printing corks!
Stinky Situation?
Real life doesn’t scale as easy as a computing cluster.
Must be one of those dark energy deniers
That is cool!!
First I’ve heard about ondsel, seems like a pretty cool project!
Check out Episode 12 of The Open Hardware Manufacturing Podcast. They have an interview with the founder of Ondsel, and how it relates to FreeCAD, and the background of it all. It’s an interesting story!
It’s not the first time the lack of access to toilet paper has threatened the stability of our technologically-advanced lives.
I might sound a little naive but I’m unclear on why you would need to have a key to access toilet paper?
Is it for the cubicles or a main cupboard supply? Here in Australia if you hire a venue then the toilet supplies are AFAIK generally included. I suppose I’m asking this because I’m led to believe there are public toilets in Europe that you have to pay to access(!?), is this part of the same sort of thing?
I’m guessing the venue has something like this, with huge toilet rolls that are usually only changed when the cleaning crew comes around: https://www.tork.ie/product/246040/dispenser/toilet-paper
It’s quite normal in other parts of Europe at least.
“Public” toilet cubicles often have lockable TP holders that require keys such as this to refill.
If the TP roll is easily removable, someone WILL steal it to use at home.
That’s just how the world is these days!
The concern is more so druggies wiping their bloody needles in the roll.
TIL that’s a think, new fear unlocked
It’s really not at all, that’s just 90s drug war bs. Not too mention these “locks” are trivial to bypass. There really there just to keep entire rolls from walking off and are just enough for that.
I had these at my access-controlled office. Funnily enough, the full rolls were kept by the cleaning staff in a cupboard that was not protected beyond all you needed to enter the office, but the holders in the stalls needed keys.
Most of these holders will not stay closed unless you lock it.
It’s a solution to a non existing problem
I have worked in a hall in Australia, they had a key just like that to refill the toilet paper rolls. Whoever used to refill the toilet paper always put the rolls in the wrong way round, and I used to have to take them all out and put them back in the right way round. There was literally a diagram in each one that showed the correct orientation.
That said, even without a key, those locks are usually easy to open with whatever you have on hand.
The key is to remove old paper roll, insert new paper roll in dispenser
I did similar for my sister who’s daycare had one remaining good key. I had her take photos from multiple angles with a ruler for scale. Then Imported the photos into fusion 360 and modeled it up. After 2 revisions it was a hit 🎯💯 made them a dozen.
I don’t use any toilet paper, so whatever you think… you can do without as well.
Don’t expect me to shake your hand.