Karlin Fox and I have been playing around with using the MQTT protocol to distribute information about the availability of certain high-demand resources in our office (namely, the bathroom). For some time now we have had an Arduino-powered red/green light (nicknamed “PottyMon”) radiating occupancy information about the upstairs bathroom across our open workspace.

Most of us work upstairs in this open workspace, but we’ve grown, and for the first time, we now have some project teams working in another space downstairs. This change has made a good excuse to embark on an educational adventure to add network support to PottyMon.

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