Introducing: Does the Elevator Work?
The elevator at the building I live in is broken a lot. To the point where residents on higher floors have negotiated with management to knock off a little rent from particularly bad months.
I thought it would be cool if the the residents could have a little status page where we update each other on whether or not the elevator is broken, plus see historical data on how bad the situation really is. One big Sunday of coding, plus a little bit on Monday and Tuesday, has resulted in this.
It's built with php and uses sqlite as the backing database. The visualizations have php programmatically outputing javascript which writes to an html canvas object. It's... disgusting. But I love it. And it works!
I had to learn a few things to get this thing made. Primarily reading and writing with databases, which php's pdo system makes pretty straightforward. But also doing password hashing and validation (so not just anyone can go in there and update things), and it was the first time I drew to an html canvas. And getting my server to let php actually talk to the database took some effort.
This is one of those projects where the journey was probably more satisfying than the destination. But early reviews from other residents have me hopeful. "Absolutely stellar," says one person in the group chat. "Priceless," says the cool older lady. "10/10" says the poor person who has to walk up ten flights of stairs every time the elevator breaks.
Now I just have to hope the building management either a) don't find it or b) don't really care.