9 ms·

Undo codes for Japanese elevator floor buttons

145 points by kalimanzaro 4y ago

bsuvc 4y ago
So depending on the manufacturer, one of these: * Double press the button (like double-click) * Long press the button * Press the button 5 times really fast. The article says this is in Japan, but would these not work anywhere? Also, the Honda CR-V ad on this page (on mobile at least) is a new kind of annoying that I hope doesn't catch on, where it "frames" the web page, occluding the text you're trying to read. It sort of reminds me of dot-com era ad tactics, where no amount of annoying your customers is off-limits.
- rsyring 4y ago
  > where no amount of annoying your customers is off-limits You aren't the customer. :) Their customers only care about ROI on their ad spend. This tactic is designed to benefit them, not you. Whether it does benefit them is debatable.
  - bsuvc 4y ago
    > You aren't the customer I guess they are trying hard to keep it that way. I do buy vehicles from time-to-time though, so I think I am a potential customer.
    - atkailash 4y ago
      You missed the point. Honda may have some targeting data they send to the ad provider but it’s those ad servicers who come up with this format and their customer is both the site and the company the ad is for. It’s not you as the customer the format is made for, and Honda didn’t make it themselves either.
      - bsuvc 4y ago
        No, I get it. I just don’t let a company off the hook because there is an intermediary between them and me. At some level, Honda pays money to have ads shown and either approve of, or don’t care about, how it is displayed. Either way is bad in my opinion and leaves me with a negative impression of their brand.
mikerg87 4y ago
Here is a list of single and double click by brands I found. Seems to be in asia mostly. Is it cultural that allows this in Asia or personal safety to disallow it outside Asia https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Elevator_car_call_cancellation https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Elevator_car_call_cancella...
- brudgers 4y ago
  In the US, it almost certainly consensus standards for in cab controls incorporated into building and fire codes by reference because elevators are important in fire fighting operations.
antman 4y ago
Long press for some european elevators, also for some worked on the OUTSIDE button, i.e. you could override the route of an elevator from someone else who had called it earlier
ravel-bar-foo 4y ago
In Korean elevators the standard is to press the button once to cancel. Like a normal press. I wonder if these button press conventions are localized.
- devilbunny 4y ago
  I've stayed in a hotel in Mexico that had this feature. FWIW, I didn't recognize the manufacturer, and it's been too long for me to recall it offhand, but I thought it was a really neat feature. Very useful if you accidentally hit the wrong button or if some five-year-old wanted to see all the lights.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I've never seen a European elevator do this and I've used a lot of them in many different countries here. People also tend to push the button here without looking whether it's already lit so this would probably backfire.
33955985 4y ago
This is how the elevators work at Apple Park. I have never seen it work anywhere else, but I've never tried in Japan.
userbinator 4y ago
I remember a long time ago encountering an elevator (in the US) where the physical buttons were the push on/push off type so you could cancel using another press, and they also popped back out once the desired floor was reached. Anyone else remember that type of control? It's probably from the 40s/50s. I haven't seen one since.
- cesarb 4y ago
  I also recall encountering that sort of elevator panel with push on/push off buttons here in Brazil, it was probably in the 80s or 90s (or at most earlier 2000s), but I don't know how old that panel was. I haven't actually used that panel myself, since there was always an elevator operator (ascensorista) on that elevator; and I believe that these elevators have since been upgraded to a modern panel. And yes, I do recall seeing more than once the ascensorista pulling on the buttons to cancel a wrongly set floor.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  No. But even in the 1980's the dorm elevator where I went to college had a way to cancel a floor select. I don't remember what the trick was though, but it was not a simple toggle.
- voidfunc 4y ago
  I've seen these in old Boston and Brookline buildings.
- userbinator 4y ago
  I did a bit more searching and, thanks to YouTube's elevator enthusiasts (yes, really), I was able to find video of this type of control in operation, although it doesn't show whether this one will pop out and cancel if you press again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUUr2nHpAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUUr2nHpAE There's also the "push to call, pull to cancel" mentioned in a sibling comment --- observe how the buttons are shaped such that they imply you can pull on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzC5Bpz-PkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzC5Bpz-PkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtsNxzDR50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtsNxzDR50
neilv 4y ago
And on the opposite-of-polite side, supposedly there's cheat codes for bypassing floors where someone is waiting for the elevator.
- klabb3 4y ago
  Does the elevator speaker play “GOD MODE” when you do that?
- pants3000 4y ago
  On some elevators you can hold the door shut button when the elevator stops at a floor to let someone on.
- kevincox 4y ago
  This could actually be useful and "polite" when you are in a full elevator. Often times there will be a packed elevator going to ground but it needs to stop+open+wait+close on every floor even though nobody can fit in. This just reduces throughput and can make rush periods stretch on for a long time. I've always wondered if elevators code detect when they were full and avoid stopping for outside requests. Some combination of total weight + weight change could likely be a heuristic that improves performance overall.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
Elevators are ridiculously configurable. I know there are the famous talks on firefighter mode etc., but is there any in-depth presentation, manual explaining the configuration options, or other documentation for all the ways an elevator can be set up? For example, I suspect all of these cheat codes can be enabled or disabled based on wishes by the building owner, and aside from parameters like how long the door stays open, the dispatching strategies can be configured too. Seeing the options and the thoughts that go into choosing a configuration would be super interesting.
- danpalmer 4y ago
  “From the Pit to the Penthouse” gives a lot of insight. All from a hacker perspective, but fascinating and fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    Yes, that's a great talk but unfortunately just a different edition of the one I meant.
SomeHacker44 4y ago
I feel canceling floors is unsafe and can permit abusive use of the elevator by predators of all sorts.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Just hate it when a bobcat is hogging the elevator.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Or any of the elevators at Miramax and The Weinstein Company.
pronlover723 4y ago
Other things about Japanese elevators 99% the "close door" button works immediately. Vs say USA where 80% are not even connected and where some are connected but the door doesn't respond for 1-2 seconds? 95% there are no light sensors, only pressure sensors. I'm guessing in the USA those are mandatory that there is a light sensor that if interrupted, causes the doors to open. In Japan those mostly don't exist, there is only a pressure sensor In Japan it's not uncommon to have someone exit the elevator and just as they exit, press the close button so the door will close immediately behind them. This is a "sorry I interrupted your time by having to stop the elevator" gesture. This wouldn't work in the USA because the light sensors would trigger the doors reopening.
- counttheforks 4y ago
  > In Japan it's not uncommon to have someone exit the elevator and just as they exit, press the close button so the door will close immediately behind them. This is a "sorry I interrupted your time by having to stop the elevator" gesture. This wouldn't work in the USA because the light sensors would trigger the doors reopening. Sounds annoying. If I see an elevator stop at a floor then I'd like a chance to actually get on it, instead of having my time wasted by a futile gesture that might save someone a second or two.
  - ninepoints 4y ago
    You don't think that before doing this gesture, the individual would check if there were people waiting to get on the elevator?
    - counttheforks 4y ago
      Hardly seems like it'd save any time if they would.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        They're walking out, it will be clear if someone is there and take no additional time.
13of40 4y ago
I saw this in an elevator in India recently. The third-hand instructions we heard were that you double-click the button to cancel, so all of us computer nerds were trying to double-click it like you would a mouse, when apparently it's click-pause-click.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  I've seen elevators that ignore short presses of buttons. You press the button, it lights up, you release, the light goes off and the elevator pretends it was never pressed. Any idea why this is being done?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    I don't know why someone implemented it specifically, but I can think of 2 possible reasons: (1) To prevent accidental presses, and (2) prevent maliciously pressing every button quickly. Or a third option: it's just shoddy implementation that happens to have an annoying effect.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Could also be a debounce mechanism to cancel out multiple presses too close together which is just a reality on switches even if you physically only pressed it once.
  - eric__cartman 4y ago
    If you're turning in a crammed elevator you could be momentarily pressing multiple buttons with your backpack. That would most definitely be annoying for everyone.
    - saagarjha 4y ago
      Did you merge two comments together?
omoikane 4y ago
Our building has a different scheme where you summon the elevator by telling it which floor you want to go, and there are no controls inside the elevator to set the destination. This supposedly enables better scheduling of elevators.
- Rodeoclash 4y ago
  I've worked in a couple of modern buildings in Australia that also feature this. While it's great for people that work in the building, you'd often see visitors get in the left, turn to look at the buttons and stop with their arm in mid air. By this point the doors have closed and they're whisked off on their mystical journey.
- voidfunc 4y ago
  We have these in newer buildings here too, but definitely confusing if you're only used to the classic elevator system.
- Someone 4y ago
  Not supposedly, for some definition of “better scheduling.”. Elevator scheduling is hard. It isn’t even clear what to optimize for. It certainly isn’t only #persons/hour or #person-floors/hour, as that could leave people stranded forever at some floors (example: why would an elevator ever make the long journey for the 10th floor to pick up passengers if it always has passengers waiting to move between doors 2 and 3?). “First come, first served” is fair, but may be too inefficient. Simple example: the single elevator in a building is empty and heading up to the 10th floor to pick up people heading down. If there’s a button press “I want to go up” on floor 3 while the elevator passes floor 2, should the elevator stop at floor 3 to pick up passengers? Probably not, as the passengers might want to go to the 20th floor, and it would be unfair to those on the 10th floor for the elevator to go up to the 20th floor before picking them up. (corollary: if you see an elevator going in the direction you want to go pass the floor you’re waiting on, that’s not necessarily a bug in the scheduler) If, on the other hand, there’s a button press “bring me to the 10th floor”, the elevator could stop at floor 3, pick up passengers, drop them off at the 10th floor, pick up those waiting there and go down. That means those waiting on floor 10 have to wait a bit longer for the extra stop on floor 3, but efficiency in #persons/hour or #person-floors/hour goes up.
alistairSH 4y ago
Why not a simple toggle? Just press the button again once to cancel. Seems way more useful then secret codes.
- b4je7d7wb 4y ago
  People might press their floor even if its selected And by the time they correct their mistake the elevator might start doing something else.
JackFr 4y ago
In the old World Financial Center in downtown NYC, you could cancel all calls by pressing 3 floors simultaneously. Not super useful if there were other people in the car. But useful if you were by yourself.
dark-star 4y ago
Oh wow I wish I had known about this in my last trip to Japan. I entered an elevator with 2 friends, we were talking, and by accident I came in contact with the buttons. These were all sensor buttons, so without any pressure I had just triggered (almost) all floors, much to the delight of my friends (and even some of the other people in the elevator). As we had to go to the 10th or 11th floor, needless to say that it was quite embarassing ;-)
- wkat4242 4y ago
  Don't feel bad. Capacitive buttons are just a really bad idea in an elevator crammed full of people as the people tend to do (and especially the Japanese judging by their metros). This is the designer's fault. Of course the other passengers may not feel that way.
WalterBright 4y ago
I'm still surprised nobody does the obvious. Have a voice announce each floor. Much better than a stupid chime as each floor is passed, as then blind people have to count. The voice is cheap as dirt, too. As the IBM PC showed, you can get perfectly intelligible voice from connecting a speaker to a 5V IO pin and turning it on and off rapidly, based on a recorded waveform. Wouldn't cost any more than a chime. My furnace has a blinkenlight for its status. Slow blink, it's working ok. Fast blink, something wrong. I go have a look, it's blinking. Is that a fast or slow blink? I hate the people that design these things.
- k_sze 4y ago
  Wait, you don’t have that in your country? Voice-announced floors is pretty much universal in China. In Hong Kong, it’s also done in three languages. The current direction (up or down) of the elevator is also announced. There are exceptions, of course, like really old buildings that don’t have rich incorporated owners to retrofit the elevators.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Nope.
- Animats 4y ago
  Otis offered that as an option from the 1960s. Here's the vocabulary.[1] It's still available, but seems to have fallen out of fashion with the decline of elevator music. There was even a "You are pressing too many floor buttons" message. [1] https://www.soundboard.com/sb/OtisElevatorVoiceAnnouncements https://www.soundboard.com/sb/OtisElevatorVoiceAnnouncements
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  I’ve been in elevators like that and it’s annoying
wkat4242 4y ago
Another cool thing is that most elevators have a phone line. It's used for the emergency button but usually also accepts inbound commands. In our old office building the installers had written the number in pencil and I called it a few times. It answered. Unfortunately it didn't activate the speaker, there must be some code. Because this would have been amazing to play practical jokes on my friends. I tried some basic DTMF but couldn't figure it out, sadly..
wyldfire 4y ago
> According to the chart, if you’re on an elevator made by Mitsubishi, Matsushita, Toshiba, or America’s Otis, you can cancel a floor by quickly tapping twice (“double-clicking”) on the corresponding button. If I had to guess I'd say in the US it's nearly always Otis or Schindler elevators that I'm riding. Do the Otis elevators installed in Japan have this feature but the Otis ones in the US lack the feature? I've never tried double-clicking to undo.
- kurthr 4y ago
  I have had it work once in the US out of more than 10 attempts. It did also work on a cruise ship, which was good because kids had hit all the floor buttons and run. Double tapping or holding a lighted button works to cancel all the time in Japan. There are other button codes. Once, when I was in Japan and we waited at 8am for a lot of full elevators going past opening up the person I got in with (to another nearly full elevator) held down the G button for several seconds, all of the floors flashed and we went straight down without stopping. I asked as we got off, and apparently on other elevators this floor bypass can be done by holding down the close door button the entire trip.
  - ed_mercer 4y ago
    G button?
    - wyldfire 4y ago
      The "G" button often represents the Ground floor (aka "first floor" here in US). Sometimes in the US 'G' indicates "Garage".
      - kurthr 4y ago
        Yes, and my memory may be faulty. It could have been a 1. Often in the US it's also the P button(s) for Parking.
luisapic 4y ago
[flagged]
Uplink 4y ago
That can be used for good: avoid embarrassment and prevent an unnecessary stop. But it can also be used for evil: cancel a valid stop that someone commanded and hope they don't notice.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

145 points by kalimanzaro 4y ago

So depending on the manufacturer, one of these: * Double press the button (like double-click) * Long press the button * Press the button 5 times really fast. The article says this is in Japan, but would these not work anywhere? Also, the Honda CR-V ad on this page (on mobile at least) is a new kind of annoying that I hope doesn't catch on, where it "frames" the web page, occluding the text you're trying to read. It sort of reminds me of dot-com era ad tactics, where no amount of annoying your customers is off-limits.

rsyring 4y ago
> where no amount of annoying your customers is off-limits You aren't the customer. :) Their customers only care about ROI on their ad spend. This tactic is designed to benefit them, not you. Whether it does benefit them is debatable.
- bsuvc 4y ago
  > You aren't the customer I guess they are trying hard to keep it that way. I do buy vehicles from time-to-time though, so I think I am a potential customer.
  - atkailash 4y ago
    You missed the point. Honda may have some targeting data they send to the ad provider but it’s those ad servicers who come up with this format and their customer is both the site and the company the ad is for. It’s not you as the customer the format is made for, and Honda didn’t make it themselves either.
    - bsuvc 4y ago
      No, I get it. I just don’t let a company off the hook because there is an intermediary between them and me. At some level, Honda pays money to have ads shown and either approve of, or don’t care about, how it is displayed. Either way is bad in my opinion and leaves me with a negative impression of their brand.

mikerg87 4y ago

Here is a list of single and double click by brands I found. Seems to be in asia mostly. Is it cultural that allows this in Asia or personal safety to disallow it outside Asia https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Elevator_car_call_cancellation https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Elevator_car_call_cancella...

brudgers 4y ago
In the US, it almost certainly consensus standards for in cab controls incorporated into building and fire codes by reference because elevators are important in fire fighting operations.

antman 4y ago

Long press for some european elevators, also for some worked on the OUTSIDE button, i.e. you could override the route of an elevator from someone else who had called it earlier

ravel-bar-foo 4y ago

In Korean elevators the standard is to press the button once to cancel. Like a normal press. I wonder if these button press conventions are localized.

devilbunny 4y ago
I've stayed in a hotel in Mexico that had this feature. FWIW, I didn't recognize the manufacturer, and it's been too long for me to recall it offhand, but I thought it was a really neat feature. Very useful if you accidentally hit the wrong button or if some five-year-old wanted to see all the lights.
wkat4242 4y ago
I've never seen a European elevator do this and I've used a lot of them in many different countries here. People also tend to push the button here without looking whether it's already lit so this would probably backfire.

33955985 4y ago

This is how the elevators work at Apple Park. I have never seen it work anywhere else, but I've never tried in Japan.

userbinator 4y ago

I remember a long time ago encountering an elevator (in the US) where the physical buttons were the push on/push off type so you could cancel using another press, and they also popped back out once the desired floor was reached. Anyone else remember that type of control? It's probably from the 40s/50s. I haven't seen one since.

cesarb 4y ago
I also recall encountering that sort of elevator panel with push on/push off buttons here in Brazil, it was probably in the 80s or 90s (or at most earlier 2000s), but I don't know how old that panel was. I haven't actually used that panel myself, since there was always an elevator operator (ascensorista) on that elevator; and I believe that these elevators have since been upgraded to a modern panel. And yes, I do recall seeing more than once the ascensorista pulling on the buttons to cancel a wrongly set floor.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
No. But even in the 1980's the dorm elevator where I went to college had a way to cancel a floor select. I don't remember what the trick was though, but it was not a simple toggle.
voidfunc 4y ago
I've seen these in old Boston and Brookline buildings.
userbinator 4y ago
I did a bit more searching and, thanks to YouTube's elevator enthusiasts (yes, really), I was able to find video of this type of control in operation, although it doesn't show whether this one will pop out and cancel if you press again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUUr2nHpAE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZUUr2nHpAE There's also the "push to call, pull to cancel" mentioned in a sibling comment --- observe how the buttons are shaped such that they imply you can pull on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzC5Bpz-PkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzC5Bpz-PkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtsNxzDR50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYtsNxzDR50

neilv 4y ago

And on the opposite-of-polite side, supposedly there's cheat codes for bypassing floors where someone is waiting for the elevator.

klabb3 4y ago
Does the elevator speaker play “GOD MODE” when you do that?
pants3000 4y ago
On some elevators you can hold the door shut button when the elevator stops at a floor to let someone on.
kevincox 4y ago
This could actually be useful and "polite" when you are in a full elevator. Often times there will be a packed elevator going to ground but it needs to stop+open+wait+close on every floor even though nobody can fit in. This just reduces throughput and can make rush periods stretch on for a long time. I've always wondered if elevators code detect when they were full and avoid stopping for outside requests. Some combination of total weight + weight change could likely be a heuristic that improves performance overall.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago

Elevators are ridiculously configurable. I know there are the famous talks on firefighter mode etc., but is there any in-depth presentation, manual explaining the configuration options, or other documentation for all the ways an elevator can be set up? For example, I suspect all of these cheat codes can be enabled or disabled based on wishes by the building owner, and aside from parameters like how long the door stays open, the dispatching strategies can be configured too. Seeing the options and the thoughts that go into choosing a configuration would be super interesting.

danpalmer 4y ago
“From the Pit to the Penthouse” gives a lot of insight. All from a hacker perspective, but fascinating and fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  Yes, that's a great talk but unfortunately just a different edition of the one I meant.

SomeHacker44 4y ago

I feel canceling floors is unsafe and can permit abusive use of the elevator by predators of all sorts.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Just hate it when a bobcat is hogging the elevator.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  Or any of the elevators at Miramax and The Weinstein Company.

pronlover723 4y ago

Other things about Japanese elevators 99% the "close door" button works immediately. Vs say USA where 80% are not even connected and where some are connected but the door doesn't respond for 1-2 seconds? 95% there are no light sensors, only pressure sensors. I'm guessing in the USA those are mandatory that there is a light sensor that if interrupted, causes the doors to open. In Japan those mostly don't exist, there is only a pressure sensor In Japan it's not uncommon to have someone exit the elevator and just as they exit, press the close button so the door will close immediately behind them. This is a "sorry I interrupted your time by having to stop the elevator" gesture. This wouldn't work in the USA because the light sensors would trigger the doors reopening.

counttheforks 4y ago
> In Japan it's not uncommon to have someone exit the elevator and just as they exit, press the close button so the door will close immediately behind them. This is a "sorry I interrupted your time by having to stop the elevator" gesture. This wouldn't work in the USA because the light sensors would trigger the doors reopening. Sounds annoying. If I see an elevator stop at a floor then I'd like a chance to actually get on it, instead of having my time wasted by a futile gesture that might save someone a second or two.
- ninepoints 4y ago
  You don't think that before doing this gesture, the individual would check if there were people waiting to get on the elevator?
  - counttheforks 4y ago
    Hardly seems like it'd save any time if they would.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      They're walking out, it will be clear if someone is there and take no additional time.

13of40 4y ago

I saw this in an elevator in India recently. The third-hand instructions we heard were that you double-click the button to cancel, so all of us computer nerds were trying to double-click it like you would a mouse, when apparently it's click-pause-click.

tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
I've seen elevators that ignore short presses of buttons. You press the button, it lights up, you release, the light goes off and the elevator pretends it was never pressed. Any idea why this is being done?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  I don't know why someone implemented it specifically, but I can think of 2 possible reasons: (1) To prevent accidental presses, and (2) prevent maliciously pressing every button quickly. Or a third option: it's just shoddy implementation that happens to have an annoying effect.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Could also be a debounce mechanism to cancel out multiple presses too close together which is just a reality on switches even if you physically only pressed it once.
- eric__cartman 4y ago
  If you're turning in a crammed elevator you could be momentarily pressing multiple buttons with your backpack. That would most definitely be annoying for everyone.
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    Did you merge two comments together?

omoikane 4y ago

Our building has a different scheme where you summon the elevator by telling it which floor you want to go, and there are no controls inside the elevator to set the destination. This supposedly enables better scheduling of elevators.

Rodeoclash 4y ago
I've worked in a couple of modern buildings in Australia that also feature this. While it's great for people that work in the building, you'd often see visitors get in the left, turn to look at the buttons and stop with their arm in mid air. By this point the doors have closed and they're whisked off on their mystical journey.
voidfunc 4y ago
We have these in newer buildings here too, but definitely confusing if you're only used to the classic elevator system.
Someone 4y ago
Not supposedly, for some definition of “better scheduling.”. Elevator scheduling is hard. It isn’t even clear what to optimize for. It certainly isn’t only #persons/hour or #person-floors/hour, as that could leave people stranded forever at some floors (example: why would an elevator ever make the long journey for the 10th floor to pick up passengers if it always has passengers waiting to move between doors 2 and 3?). “First come, first served” is fair, but may be too inefficient. Simple example: the single elevator in a building is empty and heading up to the 10th floor to pick up people heading down. If there’s a button press “I want to go up” on floor 3 while the elevator passes floor 2, should the elevator stop at floor 3 to pick up passengers? Probably not, as the passengers might want to go to the 20th floor, and it would be unfair to those on the 10th floor for the elevator to go up to the 20th floor before picking them up. (corollary: if you see an elevator going in the direction you want to go pass the floor you’re waiting on, that’s not necessarily a bug in the scheduler) If, on the other hand, there’s a button press “bring me to the 10th floor”, the elevator could stop at floor 3, pick up passengers, drop them off at the 10th floor, pick up those waiting there and go down. That means those waiting on floor 10 have to wait a bit longer for the extra stop on floor 3, but efficiency in #persons/hour or #person-floors/hour goes up.

alistairSH 4y ago

Why not a simple toggle? Just press the button again once to cancel. Seems way more useful then secret codes.

b4je7d7wb 4y ago
People might press their floor even if its selected And by the time they correct their mistake the elevator might start doing something else.

JackFr 4y ago

In the old World Financial Center in downtown NYC, you could cancel all calls by pressing 3 floors simultaneously. Not super useful if there were other people in the car. But useful if you were by yourself.

dark-star 4y ago

Oh wow I wish I had known about this in my last trip to Japan. I entered an elevator with 2 friends, we were talking, and by accident I came in contact with the buttons. These were all sensor buttons, so without any pressure I had just triggered (almost) all floors, much to the delight of my friends (and even some of the other people in the elevator). As we had to go to the 10th or 11th floor, needless to say that it was quite embarassing ;-)

wkat4242 4y ago
Don't feel bad. Capacitive buttons are just a really bad idea in an elevator crammed full of people as the people tend to do (and especially the Japanese judging by their metros). This is the designer's fault. Of course the other passengers may not feel that way.

WalterBright 4y ago

I'm still surprised nobody does the obvious. Have a voice announce each floor. Much better than a stupid chime as each floor is passed, as then blind people have to count. The voice is cheap as dirt, too. As the IBM PC showed, you can get perfectly intelligible voice from connecting a speaker to a 5V IO pin and turning it on and off rapidly, based on a recorded waveform. Wouldn't cost any more than a chime. My furnace has a blinkenlight for its status. Slow blink, it's working ok. Fast blink, something wrong. I go have a look, it's blinking. Is that a fast or slow blink? I hate the people that design these things.

k_sze 4y ago
Wait, you don’t have that in your country? Voice-announced floors is pretty much universal in China. In Hong Kong, it’s also done in three languages. The current direction (up or down) of the elevator is also announced. There are exceptions, of course, like really old buildings that don’t have rich incorporated owners to retrofit the elevators.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Nope.
Animats 4y ago
Otis offered that as an option from the 1960s. Here's the vocabulary.[1] It's still available, but seems to have fallen out of fashion with the decline of elevator music. There was even a "You are pressing too many floor buttons" message. [1] https://www.soundboard.com/sb/OtisElevatorVoiceAnnouncements https://www.soundboard.com/sb/OtisElevatorVoiceAnnouncements
throwaway1777 4y ago
I’ve been in elevators like that and it’s annoying

wkat4242 4y ago

Another cool thing is that most elevators have a phone line. It's used for the emergency button but usually also accepts inbound commands. In our old office building the installers had written the number in pencil and I called it a few times. It answered. Unfortunately it didn't activate the speaker, there must be some code. Because this would have been amazing to play practical jokes on my friends. I tried some basic DTMF but couldn't figure it out, sadly..

wyldfire 4y ago

> According to the chart, if you’re on an elevator made by Mitsubishi, Matsushita, Toshiba, or America’s Otis, you can cancel a floor by quickly tapping twice (“double-clicking”) on the corresponding button. If I had to guess I'd say in the US it's nearly always Otis or Schindler elevators that I'm riding. Do the Otis elevators installed in Japan have this feature but the Otis ones in the US lack the feature? I've never tried double-clicking to undo.

kurthr 4y ago
I have had it work once in the US out of more than 10 attempts. It did also work on a cruise ship, which was good because kids had hit all the floor buttons and run. Double tapping or holding a lighted button works to cancel all the time in Japan. There are other button codes. Once, when I was in Japan and we waited at 8am for a lot of full elevators going past opening up the person I got in with (to another nearly full elevator) held down the G button for several seconds, all of the floors flashed and we went straight down without stopping. I asked as we got off, and apparently on other elevators this floor bypass can be done by holding down the close door button the entire trip.
- ed_mercer 4y ago
  G button?
  - wyldfire 4y ago
    The "G" button often represents the Ground floor (aka "first floor" here in US). Sometimes in the US 'G' indicates "Garage".
    - kurthr 4y ago
      Yes, and my memory may be faulty. It could have been a 1. Often in the US it's also the P button(s) for Parking.

luisapic 4y ago

[flagged]

Uplink 4y ago

That can be used for good: avoid embarrassment and prevent an unnecessary stop. But it can also be used for evil: cancel a valid stop that someone commanded and hope they don't notice.

deleted 4y ago

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