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The ones in my office building have a physical accessibility intercom button that connects to the doorman downstairs, who can call/control an elevator. The tou

The ones in my office building have a physical accessibility intercom button that connects to the doorman downstairs, who can call/control an elevator. The touchscreen systems are nice in buildings with banks of multiple elevators - they let the system optimize which floors each car will stop at for maximum throughput. I can’t see the point of one in a building with just a single elevator.

atoav 3y ago
A thing that doesn't usually change (although it is not unheard of) is the number of floors in a building. If I were to design a modern elevator interface I'd probably go with backlit physical push buttons and small screens next to it. This way you can communicate disabled floors, what you find on each floor, etc. The push button light (brightness and color) can be used to indicate the current floor. The push buttons still need braille for the floor number tho.
mrguyorama 3y ago
>The touchscreen systems are nice in buildings with banks of multiple elevators - they let the system optimize which floors each car will stop at for maximum throughput. This has nothing to do with "the touchscreen". Elevator control systems have done load planning for decades, pretty much since the first moment someone realized you could control the elevator's relays with a microcontroller.
- devilbunny 3y ago
  Yeah, but before screens were commonplace and cheap, you didn't see as many of this style - where you request a floor, and it tells you which elevator to take to get there. Not that you see a lot even now. One feature I really liked was one I encountered at a Mexican resort (on an Otis elevator, so they do have the technology). You could deselect a floor by pressing the button again. So if some little kid hit every button and got off on the second (of 20) floors, you could at least avoid having it stop at every floor on the way up. Or you could correct a mistaken press easily.

atoav 3y ago

A thing that doesn't usually change (although it is not unheard of) is the number of floors in a building. If I were to design a modern elevator interface I'd probably go with backlit physical push buttons and small screens next to it. This way you can communicate disabled floors, what you find on each floor, etc. The push button light (brightness and color) can be used to indicate the current floor. The push buttons still need braille for the floor number tho.

mrguyorama 3y ago

>The touchscreen systems are nice in buildings with banks of multiple elevators - they let the system optimize which floors each car will stop at for maximum throughput. This has nothing to do with "the touchscreen". Elevator control systems have done load planning for decades, pretty much since the first moment someone realized you could control the elevator's relays with a microcontroller.

devilbunny 3y ago
Yeah, but before screens were commonplace and cheap, you didn't see as many of this style - where you request a floor, and it tells you which elevator to take to get there. Not that you see a lot even now. One feature I really liked was one I encountered at a Mexican resort (on an Otis elevator, so they do have the technology). You could deselect a floor by pressing the button again. So if some little kid hit every button and got off on the second (of 20) floors, you could at least avoid having it stop at every floor on the way up. Or you could correct a mistaken press easily.