At a previous workplace we had one downstairs toilet. I noticed that staff would often walk to the toilet only to be disappointed that it was occupied.

To fix this i grabbed our dusty Rasbperry Pi, a lot of blutack and a reed switch to update a number stored in Firebase indicating the occupancy of the toilet. Staff could then visit a website or use the /peesee command within slack to check whether they were good to go.

The bits:

• Firebase ↗
• Raspberry Pi
• Resin.io (now Balena.io) ↗
• Express ↗