If I were feeling really ambitious -- and fair warning, I'm a big believer
that any solution worth engineering is worth over-engineering -- I'd come
up with something involving light sensors (a la a gate counter) mounted on
the table legs, just above seat height. Throw in some something something
Arduino or Raspberry Pi, and Bob's your uncle.

I find myself more intimidated by the practicality of maintaining such a
system (batteries, cord management etc) than about the practicality of this
implementation, actually.

-dre.

On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 7:59 PM, Thomas Misilo <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I was wondering if anyone has been asked before to come up with a way to
> record usage of tables.
>
> The ideal solution would be a web app, that we can create floor plans with
> where all the tables/chairs are and select the "reporting time", say 9PM at
> night. Go around the library and select all the seats/tables/rooms that are
> currently being used/occupied for statistical data.
>
> We would be wanting to go around probably multiple times a day.
>
> The current solution I have seen is a pen and paper task, and then someone
> will have to manually put the data into a spreadsheet for analysis.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tom
>