Freshman MIT Students Automate Dorm Room

Inessa writes "Two freshman MIT students have automated their dorm room, complete with a big red party button which generates an instant party. Their custom-engineered system is called MIDAS, the Multi-Function In Dorm Automation System. According to the MIT News office, "Gone are the light switches and glaring fluorescent lights of a typical dorm room. Zack Anderson and RJ Ryan's room has several lighting schemes, remote web access, voice activation, a security system, electric blinds and more ... With the touch of one red button, their dorm room becomes a rave. The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat.""

What a couple of nerds...

And I mean that in the good way, not in the bad at sports way.

Re:What a couple of nerds...

Real nerds don't need all that stuff for a party. All they need are a couple of computers, a network switch and a couple of cases of Mountain Dew

Re:What a couple of nerds...

I've always thought that if necessity is mother of all inventions, laziness must be the father. Think about it:

Two cave men, Oog and Ug need to move rocks to the top of a hill. Now, Ug is a hard worker, and doesn't mind carrying all those rocks uphill all day. Hey, you do what you have to. But Oog is sick of it, and wants to go home and look at his private "cave drawing" collection, so he invents the wheelbarrow sohe gets done in 1/4 the time as Ug.

The next day, Ug collapses of heat exhastion and is crushed by a rock he was carrying, ensuring Oog's reproduction, setting up humanity to be perfectly fine with inventing new things so they can be lazier.

Otherwise it wouldn't be MIT... would it?

This inculcation of curiosity and resourcefulness is what makes studying at MIT truly unique. No wonder it is one of the premier educational institutions in the world.

great, but

they couldn't solve the "where do we get chicks from?" problem. or maybe, these oxygen gas bottles are of some use after all..

Instant women...

I am pretty sure the same button inflates their "girlfriends" as well!

Re:great, but

"where do we get chicks from?"

B.U.

Thanks, Mom and Dad

Why, when we were in college, we couldn't afford to have all of that expensive automation gear. We had to get up off of our asses and actually turn lights off on and on, and we liked it that way. In-room fridge? Hah! We were so poor, we had to keep a little piece of Velveeta frozen on the dorm room window sill, saving it up for our big Friday night celebrations. But tell that to kids today, and they won't believe you. No sir.

You had it easy.

we had to keep a little piece of Velveeta frozen on the dorm room window sill

When I went to school, Velveeta hadn't been invented yet. We had to walk in all manner of weather conditions to the vetrinary science buildings, uphill both ways, and steal milk from the cows, which we then had to curdle in the bathroom sink. Only then could a Friday night celebration be had.

Re:Thanks, Mom and Dad

In MY day, we had to actually get chicks drunk at parties. Now, these kids just have to press a button.

LK

MIT students definition of a party...

Why is it I get the feeling that there is a reason these guys have that much time on their hands?

Nice work and all that, but most decent parties at college include three staple ingredients

1) Alcohol
2) Women
3) Alcohol

Though alcohol appears twice this is on purpose, once to get you drunk enough to ask, then a woman to ask, the second to get her drunk enough to agree. Now an automated party system that achieved that... the guys would be millionaires by next Wednesday.

But...

I bet their dorm room still smells like dirty laundry.

Rave???

Hey, 1989 called, they want their party terms back...

Next project...

the "off" button.

Feel the energy? WTF?

The lights go out, the blinds close, the displays read, "feel the energy" as a voice repeats the same phrase over a deep bass beat."

Appearantly, these "freshmen" haven't been out of their dorm room since the early 90's

Next Story

Someone gets in through remote web access and continually makes it party mode.

Video

You can watch a video here [youtube.com] of it in action.

Also has fleeing female mode....

At a single voice command the door swings shut and locks, bars secure the window, the lights dim, room oxygen is reduced by 20% creating a lightheadedness, and the audio system repeats the phrase "Give in, you know you want me".

Re:Bit small for a party

in other words, how does it scale?"

Re:Bit small for a party

I'm not sure how other folks do it, but in my year in a dorm, I introduced my roommate to my girlfriend's roommate, and they seemed to get along well enough that by the end of the year, girlfriend and roommate had basically traded rooms.

Re:Bit small for a party

Advice from a mother to her college age, Boston-bound daughter:

"Never go out with an MIT student; they are horrible dates. More than
any other college men, they are only after one thing:

Sleep."

Re:One thing is for sure

What, MIT is co-ed now? Mortifying.

Re:Wow!

Be sarcastic if you must, but their next upgrade is to integrate a chick magnet into the system. Activating 'party mode' by default spawns a Babe-Level Management Routine (BALMER), which controls the Magnet. Preset desired peak and sustained chick levels are set in the Application Data Layer, and MIDAS carefully manages the Chick Magnet to maintain the ambient babeness at the level desired for the activity. When the security cameras, IR sensors, or seismographs determine that levels are exceeded, the Magnet is taken off line or dropped to a lower power level (From "Ferrari" to "Porsche" all the way down to "Ford Fairlane").

It all looks very impressive on paper, but they're having trouble getting enough juice to those magnets, and as yet have been unable to give the BALMER anything but a dry run.

Re:It May Look Nice...

It's all a nice setup, but when happens when these kids have to move out of that dorm? (Due to a pile of dirty laundry growing legs and chewing on wires)

If they want, they don't have to move out for three years. On most halls at East Campus, you can squat your room as long as you want (except that they'll probably have to keep squatting it as a double).

I bet everything has been screwed or nailed in, modified and altered to accommodate all this equipment. Who allowed them to do this?

Joe Graham. ("Kids making illegal modifications to their rooms? I'm on it!")

Last time I checked you weren't allowed to mess around with dorm rooms.

At East Campus, you actually are allowed to mess around with dorm rooms. Murals are painted everywhere, and all sorts of cool shit happens. The building is so old that nobody cares anymore, except for the Cambridge Fire Department. And if you keep the room's door locked during inspection, they don't have to know about it.

Nice system and all, but -10 practicality. Maybe it would have worked better in a house or apartment. They should have worked more in how it looked and how it was to be set up instead of just building it.

Yeah, but by the time they live in a house or apartment, they won't have the free time to do this kind of stuff. Heck, next term they probably won't have that kind of time.

Re:It May Look Nice...

As a fellow resident of this dorm (East Campus, home of the disco dance floor, time traveler's convention, and numberous other widgets features here at some time) I feel qualified to call you both uniformed and a bit of an ass. :P

This degree of customization is quite common and encouraged here. The building was built in the 20s and its condition very much reflects that. For that reason students are allowed to do pretty much whatever they can get around the fire code. Many rooms feature lofted beds, weird paint schemes and odd lighting. The hallways are covered completely with student painted murals.

If they tear it down tomorrow (or Saturday since that was check-out for the summer) and leave big holes in the walls nobody would know the difference. If they leave it in the next residents will take it over since they'll be the same type of person. Also, most people live on the same floor for all four of their years, many staying in the same room.

My floor, 2E, features a lounge with a lofted couch, hacked together projection system, a water cooled media center, and a 16 processor Alpha (4x ES40) cluster in our kitchen.