A look into a geeked - out Brooklyn role reveals the beginnings of a product that every nerd in America would buy : a front door that unlock when you check in .
When the video of thedoor that unlocks with Foursquare check - inswent viral , I decided to go see how it works — and whether I could get my own .
It was tempting to whip out my phone , check in and take the air right upstairs , announcing that I did n’t know where I was — just that I was blindly follow my MapQuest . Instead , I raise off a tweet ahead of meter and was recognise byNick Hall , a Brooklyn Web developer atApartm.netwho hap to have build this fiddling piece of Foursquarey magic trick right up the street from me in Brooklyn .
Hall and his brotherErin Sparling , also a Web developer , installed the Foursquare room access a couple of months ago as a room to let their smattering of underlings insert the office . He take me through the door system and the rest of his uber - wired stuff and nonsense , which admit a nursing home - build touch - screen mass medium arrangement , improvised planet T1 connection , and a coffee table made of an Apple X - serve .
Here ’s how the doorway works . The paint to the Foursquare door is a little WWW relay gimmick , which actually hosts its own little web page ( aw ! ) that the blood brother practice to run some Javascript . “ The relay is hypothesize to be for industrial use of goods and services , ” says Hall . “ I retrieve it ’s mean to be used to manipulate pumps . ” Here it is :
A Mac Mini chills out near the door and makes requests to Foursquare ’s API every three irregular , count for new check - Hoosier State at Apartm.net . When the information processing system find one , it contacts the WWW relay , which sents a bare binary bbzzzz ! through a small copper cable that has been solder to the intercom button in the hallway . The intercommunication system is fool into thinking the button has been pressed , and it unlocks the door via the building ’s existing bell organization . It ’s shockingly quick . ( Right now , only white - number Foursquare substance abuser can get in , but all that will modify when the brothers throw their New Year ’s Party : it ’ll be open to all . )
Their ISP is a satellite dish aimed at the Empire State Building . See that hole in the wall below ? That goes to a artificial satellite mantrap on the ceiling of their northside Brooklyn apartment , which is pointed at another dish on the Empire State Building . Using this line of merchandise - of - sight connection , the brothers were able to get an industrial T1 connection beamed straight to our sleepy-eyed Polish neighborhood . Now that better ISPs have arrived , they ’re transitioning to a hardline connectedness , but Hall does n’t sound like he ’s quick to permit the satellite go just yet .
They ramp up a homegrown touch - screen media server . Below , you ’ll see Nick and the office media center to his right . That monitoring machine mounted on the wall ? It ’s a touch - screen that operates the Mac Mini they apply as a medium server , which you’re able to see on the shelf below the AirPort infrastructure station . The touch - screen also power the projector over the couch , and the stereo . Unfortunately , this system of rules was n’t solicit up , because they ’re in the midriff of upgrade the system to run altogether off an iPad .
Oh , and check out their Nintendo exhibit below the A / V stuff , and the obligatory bucket of bike parts : This is Brooklyn , after all .
This is the coffee tree tabular array that you do not spill crapulence on . It ’s an disco biscuit - attend that one of Sparling ’s pupil commute into a coffee tabular array for them ( he instruct an HTML course of study , in addition to heading up front - goal development for the Wall Street Journal ) . “ in the beginning , we just put the ten - serve here and rested things on it . So we figured we might as well make it a substantial table , ” say Hall .
Below , that ’s a newfangled MacBook Air , for weighing machine ( and envy ) . The Canon 5D on the table is n’t the same one they used to buck the viral video ; that ’s the work of his crony ’s 5D Mark ii . Oh , and it ’s deserving mentioning that this coffee berry table is the entanglement server the crony use to host the Apartm.net website — so if this clause gets too much traffic , it ’ll generate a meltown in their life way . ( A new HDD is on us , Nick . )
Here ’s the actual office space where “ work , ” at some point , gets done . The Mac Mini that runs the Foursquare doorway operation is to the right wing , outside the build . Next to it are a few terabytes of backup computer storage .
Brooklyn
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