Sensor Walk

September 18th, 2010 in Home Categories by ezraezra1 Comment

Look around you. Just look around you. Know what we are looking for? Correct, the answer is sensors.

For this assignment, we had to take a walk around a neighborhood and take count of every interaction with a sensor we saw.

Trying to learn new areas of Manhattan, I decided to take a stroll on 24th street, between 5th and 6th Avenue. When I started my talk, I was expecting to see quite the surplus of sensors. A city doesn’t become a ‘cultural mecca’ without having its fair share of technology. The first one I noticed was a parking meter. It had three forms of sensors; buttons, credit card reader, and coin input slots. I consider both the card reader and coin slot as sensors since they detect when either of them have something inserted into them, and then act accordingly. Along with this, there where also pay phones, which include push-buttons, microphone, coin input, and volume push-button.

Many of the apartments that did not have a doorman had call boxes, which contain push-bottons and a microphone for input. Most of these boxes seemed to have been created in a different generation, since they show great wear and tear. They still work, so I guess there is no reason to replace them. A few of the higher end apartment and stores had card readers where one can just place his/her card next to the sensor and it would act accordingly.

I was only able to find one handicap accessible push-button, which opens doors.

Inside the home depot, there was an array of sensors, ranging from cameras, atm, cash registers, light switches, etc.