The In-Room Sensor in the W Hotel
I stayed in the W Hotel for this year’s JavaOne conference. It is a very nice hotel with the best location for JavaOne — I can go back to my room after a session, change, and catch the next session in time. The room is tiny for its $400 / night price tag — it can barely hold two people chatting with each other. But hey, this is San Francisco real estate.
What I found most amusing about the room is that it has a small box mounted on the wall facing the bed. At the first glance, it looked like a video camera. Why would a hotel install a video camera to spy on guests? So, I decided to climb up the desk and have a better look. It turns out to be more high tech than I thought!
It is actually an IR / heat sensor capable of detecting people in the room. If it detects no one in the room, it automatically adjusts the A/C to save energy and notifies the housekeeping staff that it is okay to come into the room now. That is pretty neat. I guess each housekeeper would also have a handhold device to query for this information as they go from room to room? That would be excellent use case for a Java end-to-end application. 
Now I think of it, maybe such sensors have been installed in many hotels I stayed in the past. But this time I stayed in the tiny W hotel room for week — so I had a better chance to actually notice it. 
May 14th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Is it a similar IR sensor used in a typical house with security system? Your living room should already have one…
May 14th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Hmm, guess I am stupid. I was not aware the “motion sensor” in the house is IR-based.
July 11th, 2007 at 4:09 pm
To me, this would constitute an invasion of my privacy. If I am staying at a hotel, I do not necessarily want people to know if and when I am in my room; that is my business, not housekeeping’s.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:07 am
I agree with Dennis above. Whose business is it to know where I am anyway. I’m paying for the room after all. I want my privacy.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:22 am
I did some searching and found that the ‘SensorStat’ I found in my room can detect far more than just my being present. I think it’s capabilities are too numerable to mention. As I read on I found that rooms with a bar were able to detect how much liquor was poured etc.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Thats might be something looking into your privacy. I would realy look if there is more devices of that kind in my room