PPlanter: Rapidly deployable, reconfigurable public urinal and sink

by georgethayes • 14 years ago

24 17 14 years ago

wandermatt• 14 years ago

How will folks resist the urge to pee on the QR code?

m0hit3• 14 years ago

London has these $75,000 public urinals that disappear during the day http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/19/urilift-the-disappearing-...

debacle• 14 years ago

Why did that cost 75k? I can only assume it's to be bulletproof against rowdy drunks.

thaumaturgy2• 14 years ago

Good hydraulic lift; custom manufacturing; extensive safety testing (what happens if the lift fails?); cost of building a product for a bureaucracy (paperwork, adherence to regulations, extension of development timeline); R&D and payback on loans or other capital outlay; profit.

m0hit3• 14 years ago

The currently installed public urinals of San Francisco cost $300,000.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/17toilets.html

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

I wonder if they have anything to keep people clear when those are rising/setting.

Someone2• 14 years ago

AFAIK, these things are operated by remote control by people standing nearby (http://urilift.com/: "Every night at about 22.00 the UriLift is activated by personnel from a bar nearby")

That way, they are about as dangerous as remotely controlled garage doors.

lesliet2• 14 years ago

This project is for the UP festival, and here are some more sketches/designs of the project: http://sf.urbanprototyping.org/projects/ppplanter/

There are some major efforts around this. eg. bill gates Foundation http://www.gatesfoundation.org/watersanitationhygiene/Pages/..., or the toilet masterplan in SF http://toiletproject.org

lightyrs• 14 years ago

Just curious, how would you go about detecting urine with sensors?

jlgreco3• 14 years ago

Probably an "electronic nose" that detects a particular chemical or mixture of chemicals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_nose

m0hit3• 14 years ago

The planter primarily senses smell, entry/exit and water level. There is also a mechanical system (construction is going on) that mixes an "appropriate" amount of water with pee, so that it is usable by the plant.

So in all we can sense:

- number of people that went into the planter (approx)

- amount of pee was collected

- smell levels based on usage/pee levels

there are also some more things related to plant growth.

lubujackson• 14 years ago

This seems really great until you realize peeing on a tree is about exactly the same thing.

beatpanda• 14 years ago

Hey all. I work for GAFFTA, one of the organizations putting on the UP festival, and I'm super excited to see this on Hacker News. Here's where you can see the rest of the UP projects:

http://sf.urbanprototyping.org/projects These are the projects chosen from our Open Call several months ago — they're longer term with bigger budgets.

http://sf.urbanprototyping.org/makeathon/projects These were chosen from our Makeathon a few weeks ago.

It's going to be awesome. If you're in SF this weekend, come down to 5th and Mission and check it out.

lesliet2• 14 years ago

Here is the facebook invite: http://www.facebook.com/events/306073629499817/

PPlanter: Rapidly deployable, reconfigurable public urinal and sink

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