Smart Hotel Rooms in New York City

hc1379 writes "Back in the 90's, Mark Weiser a Xerox PARC scientist envisioned future computing will weave themselves into the background of our everyday life. People will use computing as natural as they use writing instruments. He called it ubiquitous computing (aka pervasive computing). UbiComp was a good research idea, but did not really find its way into the commercial market, at least not in the life time of Mark Weiser, who died in 1999. One of Harry's blog reports that the Mandarin Oriental in Manhattan has smart hotel rooms that can keep track of guests' preferences and change the room conditions automatically (e.g., adjusting room temperature and lighting conditions based on the guest's preference, and alerting maids when the minibar is running low on soda)."

Jane, stop this crazy thing!

[Senes]

Would be amusing to see what one good hacker or software glitch could do with a room like that. As if being able to scan people's important info out of a key card wasn't enough.

wish there was more detail

[lashi]

I would love to know what products the hotel is using. I would like to automate my home.

Smart hotel

[aktzin]

A good example of advanced computer intelligence in a hotel (not just the rooms) is in the detective/science fiction novel "Altered Carbon" by Richard K. Morgan:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-fo rm/102-8961702-9548145 [amazon.com]

It's set mostly in San Francisco in the 25th century, and there's a "Hendrix hotel" that's actually controlled by a self-aware AI inspired by its famous namesake. There's a very violent scene where some thugs attempt to commit a crime in the lobby. Let's just say the hotel had really good security.

I've seen various things like this done

[grahamsz]

I had a hotel in italy where the room lights were activated by your room key. This allowed them to know exactly when you left your room. One day we took a nap in the middle of the day, wandered round the town for an hour or so and returned to find that the bed had been remade.

The offered otherwise excellent service (Hotel Panorama, Venice btw) but using technology for a few extra touches makes all the difference.

The Mirage in las vegas had a minibar that was monitored by computer in my suite. I'm not sure if they'd have come and restocked it, but it stops you replacing that $4 bottle of aquafina you took with an inferior quality one from safeway.

My point is that these smart features wont make a craptastic hotel better, but they can make a nice one nicer.

Nice if *I* had the information

[Filthysock]

Like a 'hotel prefs' wireless usb key ring that worked across all the hotel chains, the room would read and write to it while I were there and but wouldn't store it.

Re:The world revolves around you

[mzwaterski]

As a brief reply, I don't think that the repair argument holds. How often do you repair your clock radio, how often do you repair your television? Not really that often. Just because it is electronic doesn't mean it will break. This is especially true when people aren't allowed to tinker with the software of the device. If the software behind these devices is handled well, I don't think you will have to worry about reinstalling the OS on your thermostat.

Stayed in one in Philly Two years ago

[puto]

I stayed one in Rittenhouse in Philly, well almost three years ago.

They had a console by the bed where you could control lights, tv, temp etc.

The best featue is you could set the temp of the shower and it would turn itself on when it got to the promper temp it would notify you.

It also had movies on demand. So my girlfriend and I decided to watch a video on demand. The movie Barcelona. She had never seen it. I told her about it. I got in the shower after the movie started, or was supposed to start.

I come out of the shower and she is seated on the bed with a funny look. And this is a girl who spent ten years working in Turkey and various other countries. Unshakeable.

The automated system had decided to lock on some weird shemale porn flick that was in a loop.

She figured it was glitched, and it wasn't me.

True story...

I thought the automated room would be romantic.

The next day they fixed it and gave us a free night.

True story. Nothing like shem porn to be a mood killer.

Puto

Re:Anonymous movies

[xoip]

The Westin that I worked at in University, used Lucky #7 as the porn code...btw North American customers usually watched for 15 min.....Asian business men....left the movies on all day

Re:Nice if *I* had the information

[Gondola]

That's exactly what I envisioned when I first thought about it.

It would be very easy to have a tiny filesystem readable via Bluetooth or whatever, with something like

HOTEL_PREFS.CFG
TV_PREFS.CFG
DESKTOP_PREFS.CFG
LAPTOP_PREFS.CFG
BEVERAGE_PREFS.CFG
DINNER_PREFS.CFG
MEDICALERT.CFG
PUBLIC_KEY.CFG

Imagine your waiter coming up to you at a restaurant you've never been to and saying, "Welcome sir and madame. Your usual?"

Imagine they don't have to ask if you want sour cream or butter or cheese, or how you want your steak done, or if you want lemon in your tea. It's all recorded on their belt PC along with your order. With just a few strokes of a pen or voice recognition, the chefs in the restaurant see an order pop up on the screen, without the waiter having to return to the kitchen. Their belt PC tells them when the food is ready.

You approach a guest desktop PC in your hotel room and it automatically sets your preferred resolution, color scheme, and most commonly used apps, along with the latest news in the categories you prefer. With no effort involved.

Your television automatically displays a welcome message and displays upcoming shows that fit your viewing preferences, or suggests movies you can order.

Just the tip of the iceberg, really. Once computing and networking is truly ubiquitous, our lives really will change.

Re:why hotels?

[Red Flayer]

"the vast majority of people are not repeat visitors to the same hotel..."

No, but the vast number of frequent travelers are. Business travelers, jetsetters, etc... Not only that but for people who rarely travel to the same destination a lot still tend to stay at a particular chain. Incentive programs have made a big difference with this.

Even those of us who only stay at hotels 5x a year tend to stay in the same ones, if we go to the same city every year. Find one you like, stick to it.

Re:Computers are great

[jacksonj04]

Our shower is computer controlled with user profiles, it's a pain in the ass. Yes, it has shower, rain shower, steam generator, body jets and foot massager features (Sometimes all at once) but all I want is a bloody shower.

The profiles are useful for getting a starting point (Such as turning off the bits I don't want), but from there on it's manual control.

On the plus side, the computer control keeps the water pressure and temperature constant at whatever you set it to (On a nice LCD, so you can see the temperature) even when people flush the toilet. *That's* what computer control should be for, none of this profile nonsense.