You need a doorbell

Sometimes a dumb technical approach can be a solution to a real world problem.

I live in a graduate residence that doesn't have a buzzer system. To be granted access, my guests have to text/call me directly and I have to walk downstairs to let them in. Though this may not seem like a big deal, if I'm having more than just a couple people over, it can be a bit much to continuously be checking my phone and interrupting conversations to sprint through hallways to the door.

I know it's not just me. Two of my friends had an apartment near me, when I lived in New York, on Mott Street. Their apartment building, which was built in 1900, had no buzzer system, even though it probably housed 50 people or more (and cost more than your parents' mortgage payment per month for about 12 square feet of space). When friends were coming over, the new arrivals would text to announce that they were outside, and my friends would drop the front door key in a sock out the window onto the busy street. Somehow no one was ever injured, and it sure was a lot of fun.

The approach I take here is to make the arrival process more seamless and transfer burden of opening the door off the party hosts and onto the guests. Go ahead and design a robot that turns a doorknob on command at your own peril.

Introducing you-need-a-doorbell

you-need-a-doorbell is a simple app that uses text messages and audio alerts to manage your guests' arrival to the party. When they arrive, guests text a phone number that you have registered through Twilio. (Not your own cell!) Their contact information is validated against permission lists, and if the guest is authorized to enter the party, an announced is made from your computer speakers.

DING DONG! Guest Flo Rida has arrived to the party.

Since everybody in the party can hear this announcement, it gives you, the host, latitude to spin on your heels and point to some unsuspecting soul: "Go let Flo Rida in!"

The host can even have the app randomly assign responsibility to open the door from the list of guests who have already arrived. This further removes responsibility from your plate as now, not only are you not running down to open the door, but you're not even pointing a finger at anyone! (And everyone knows computers are blameless.)

Check out you-need-a-doorbell on GitHub.

Making the app

A simple Flask web server runs on my macOS desktop. Then, when a guest sends a text to the party-specific phone number, the text message number and body are packaged into a POST request to a URL on my server. After validation of the phone number, a text-to-speech utility like say is used to play a message out of the speakers. The original version I whipped up for a small kickback at my place was only 49 lines of code.

I added new features after my own alpha test and packaged things more nicely so that options could be specified in a config file. I really enjoyed making this, as I learned a bit about Flask and admired the simplicity of the Twilio API.

Going forward, I would re-design this so that the app was hosted in the cloud and party hosts could access everything through a web interface. The server could run on EC2 or some other service, listening for requests from Twilio. Simultaneously, the party host would log in to the server. A connection would be kept open using a web socket. There, they could manage permissions for potential guests, view those who had arrived (or those that were still expected), and listen for arrival messages. One could even import attendance info from a Facebook event. Perhaps, as I continue to learn more about web development, I'll create this interface. For now, I'm happy with what I have, and I hope you may be too.

Since I added new features after my alpha test and didn't do very thorough testing, you may find some bugs. Please let me know if that's the case.

I found that the text message interface for guests worked really well. It's interesting how everyone and their mother releases iOS/Android apps to facilitate just simple messaging with their organization and access to static resources like maps or schedules. I'm not sure that this interface is any better than a text message hotline and a website. As "bots" are becoming the rage for many simple tasks, maybe we'll see the lowly SMS make more of a resurgence.