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List of Special Elevator Modes
- mmazing 5y agoI recall hearing of a mode one time where elevators would only go to the 2nd floor and not the 1st. Something for crime, etc. Maybe it was from a movie or something ... Edit : Thanks! Found it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Riot_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Riot_mode
- rail 5y agoRiot mode.
- dkdbejwi383 5y agoSo only going 0 to 2 and that’s it? Not sure I understand the use case.
- Akronymus 5y ago1st floor, for many people, refers to the ground floor. Basically, it excludes the ground level/publicly accessible floor, like a hotel lobby.
- royjacobs 5y agoIf you're interested in elevators and the hacking thereof I would also highly recommend this talk: https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus https://youtu.be/ZUvGfuLlZus
- simlevesque 5y agoThe kind of videos you can watch once a year. Deviant Ollam is so interesting.
- phnofive 5y agoPet mode is interesting; it allows you to take your pet on an express ride to your desired floor at the cost of a slightly slower speed.
- Aardwolf 5y agoOr can be abused, without pet, to go directly to your desired floor without being interrupted by those passengers at other floors.
- pjerem 5y agoIn Japan, where this pet mode exists, honor and respect of social rules are something, and I doubt you would take the risk to be seen leaving an elevator in pet mode without a pet.
- DonHopkins 5y agoDoes a Tamagotchi count? ;)
- dbcurtis 5y agoSome destination-dispatch systems used in high-end residential towers will not schedule pet owners and non-pet owners to the same cab at the same time. Which makes a lot of sense.
- dmurray 5y agoI'd expect it to be more of a problem having multiple pet owners in the same car.
- dbcurtis 5y agoWell you have dog-phobic or people with allergies for neighbors.
- heikkilevanto 5y agoYes, I have a slight allergy for most of my neighbors :-)
- Y_Y 5y ago
- hawk_ 5y agomy personal favorite is the Sabbath mode https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Sabbath_service_(SHO) https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Sabbath_service_(SHO) not to pick on a specific belief system, but it's quite interesting the lengths people go to follow the letter but not the spirit of things.
- chimeracoder 5y ago> not to pick on a specific belief system, but it's quite interesting the lengths people go to follow the letter but not the spirit of things. That's not the way observant Jewish people look at it at all. You're assuming that these workarounds are not "following the spirit", but according to them, the workarounds are as much a part of the spirit of the law as the law itself.
- tamaharbor 5y agoTell that to your nearest Eruv.
- seigando 5y agoThere's no reason for that to not be the case.
- AndrewDucker 5y agoThe letter was, they believe, the word of God. If God hadn't meant the loophole to be there then he would have used different words. The loophole is divine.
- krapp 5y ago>If God hadn't meant the loophole to be there then he would have used different words. The loophole is divine. One could just as well state that if God had meant the loophole to be there, he would have mentioned it.
- 5y ago
- dinkleberg 5y agoMaybe this is common knowledge, but I never knew people used fandom for topics like this. I’m amazed that it had 800+ articles and over 1000 videos on a wiki dedicated to elevators.
- fortran77 5y agoThere are many "elevator spotters" on YouTube. I can watch elevator videos for hours. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE9x-S_3sdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE9x-S_3sdY It's a very interesting community: See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz9ZzIgyDR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz9ZzIgyDR8
- jdmichal 5y agoI remember seeing an elevator once that lit up both the up and down arrows when arriving if it didn't have a set destination yet. I called it Schroedinger's elevator -- neither going up or down until observed to move.
- rossdavidh 5y agoWere you alive or dead when you noticed this?
- jdmichal 5y agoI was on vacation. So more alive than typical, but dead to those who usually see me around.
- dinkleberg 5y agoI love this aspect of HN. I never would’ve known there was a community around a shared interest in elevators, yet this topic has hit the top of HN and a bunch of members of that community have all gathered here.
- thrdbndndn 5y agoI think the surprising part (to me at least) isn't there are communities for elevator lovers, but there is a wiki about it on Fandom.
- dbcurtis 5y agoPfft. List is far from complete. I have done 3rd party interfaces to several elevator controllers. I am highly encumbered by NDA’s, so won’t say much. But I still wonder what “Korean Lunch 2” mode does???
- iratewizard 5y agoAh, yes. The mode that fills the elevator with vinegar and waits for the passengers to ferment.
- rossdavidh 5y agoI live in a warm climate and can confirm that sometimes the passengers do start fermenting, if it's summer in the middle of the day.
- hooplah 5y agoWouldn't that most likely be derivative of a peak mode (either up or down). Park at top, open doors, wait for traffic down, return up. Korea Lunch 1 would park at top for people leaving for lunch, 2 would park at bottom for people returning?
- jannyfer 5y agoOoh I've no idea what that would do, but wanted to share something interesting I noticed. When I visited Korea, I've noticed companies tend to have exact 12-1PM lunchtimes, all at the same time. People raise eyebrows if you leave at 11:50 and return 12:50. At 12PM, it's hard to grab an elevator going down, so people will press the "up" button to try to catch an empty elevator, then ride it to the top then down to the ground. Vice versa for 1PM.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago> When I visited Korea, I've noticed companies tend to have exact 12-1PM lunchtimes, all at the same time. People raise eyebrows if you leave at 11:50 and return 12:50. It just seems so inefficient to do it that way? In theory, I guess the company sorta benefits from having everyone on/off at once, but doing it like that basically guarantees traffic jams.
- rightbyte 5y agoI wish 'hold to deselect' was standard. It only works on some elevators and it can be quite annoying if some kid presses all floors ...
- jackbeck 5y agoI found that on some elevators a quick double press cancels a selection.
- dqv 5y agoSince we’re talking about elevators, it would appear anyone can call the elevator’s emergency phone line. Which is good, but also has unintended consequences: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdXyQ5ra/ https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdXyQ5ra/
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoDepends on model and implementation. Usually these days the alarm phone will not pick up calls from any number (allow list used), but this looks like older car, so this might be retrofitted and/or maybe some software rules were not set during installation.
- sam_goody 5y agoThere was a story of a guy who got stuck in an elevator and called for help, but the installer had gone bust and the number had been assigned to a psychiatrist in another county. At first the therapist claimed he couldn't do anything, but when the man pleaded for help, the therapist replied "Well, how does it feel to be trapped in an elevator."...
- ortusdux 5y agoI had read somewhere that holding the boor close button along with your desired floor button will override the que in many elevators, taking you directly to that floor. I successfully tested the button combo in the elevator in my building. It came in handy when a kid pressed all the buttons and then stuck his tongue out at me.
- mmastrac 5y agoMy university had an elevator with a special three-button keypress that took you to a dark sub-basement full of asbestos warnings and terrifyingly dark that wasn't listed on the display.
- _squared_ 5y agoYou should have explored a bit, might be cake down there
- rognjen 5y agoI heard it's a lie
- exikyut 5y agoSo you'd hold down all 3 buttons at once, or press them in a specific sequence, or...? When you did this, did the floor indicator show anything different? And where (what country) was this?
- mmastrac 5y agoIt was three floor buttons at the same time. I cannot recall what the floor indicator said, but the elevator was quite old and might not have even had one. This was at the University of Calgary, engineering buildings (circa 2000)
- exikyut 5y agoInteresting! Thanks very much for the info. Now to find the other lifts out there with controllers from around the same time period that operate similarly... :)
- mmastrac 5y agoIIRC it felt like a late 70s/early 80s elevator. No manual controls, but the first style of automated elevators. The buildings were completed in the late 60s. I assume that these were probably installed at the beginning.
- geephroh 5y agoSlightly off-topic, but I'd definitely recommend Colson Whitehead's _The Intuitionist_[1] for anyone interested in the intersection of elevators and speculative mysteries. Never thought I'd get the chance to post this to an HN thread... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intuitionist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intuitionist
- splatzone 5y agoIt’s really nice to get some fiction recommendations from HN! Looking forward to reading this
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agoOne of my first thoughts too. I preferred John Henry Days, but whatever. As for The Intuitionist -- the whole thing is kind of a troll. Like, the premise is absurd. Of course, that's sort of the point.
- llampx 5y agoI wondered why, during the pandemic, it wasn't common to let elevators "air out" while they were idle. Given what we know about COVID-19 and how it spreads with aerosols. From looking at this list, it appears that that's not a mode they would have by default.
- galago 5y agoI work in an office building that's less than 5 years old. During the pandemic the elevators started returning to the ground floor and opening their doors. I wonder if the system is configured via the control panel in the elevator or if there's some other interface.
- jakemal 5y agoSounds like it was in up-peak mode? https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Up_peak_(MIT) https://elevation.fandom.com/wiki/Up_peak_(MIT)
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoMore likely just a static parking rule. Usually "peak" modes are dynamic and only in effect when there is a lot of usage i.e. peak in traffic
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoAs someone who works in the elevator industry this list is pretty odd and is missing many modes that I would consider default modes. However to get back to "airing the elevator out". Do you mean just not closing doors after serving a call? Maybe having someone timeout after serving a call to not move? Or actually installing fans to blow out the air?
- piceas 5y agoIn my building the elevator returns to ground. My preference would be to simply have the doors left open closest to the source of fresh air.
- natch 5y agoI’ll just leave this here… I love this guy, he is so passionate about mechanical stuff. A bit on the odd side but a lot of heart. https://youtube.com/c/WestCoastElevators https://youtube.com/c/WestCoastElevators
- teruakohatu 5y agoIf says this about 'Pet Mode' > Does not infect other passengers if the animal has an infection I think this must be a mistranslation. There are very few infectious diseases that a human can get from being around a house pet. I think they mean allergies.
- DonHopkins 5y agoRabies?
- user-the-name 5y agoOther pets can, though.
- matsemann 5y agoRelated, Elevator Saga. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27487111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27487111 A game where you program the logic of elevators to move people around efficiently. Surprisingly complicated.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y agoI've heard this is a legit job for people with serious Operations Research qualifications.
- 1024core 5y agoI found a "mode" in an elevator in India that I have not seen anywhere else: if a destination floor number is highlighted, and you press it twice, it gets cancelled. I have used this magic power just once, when an obnoxious man got on and insisted on having a loud conversation on his phone. Since he wasn't paying attention, I double-tapped his floor number and made him skip. I happened to get off at the floor before his, so the elevator went down to the first floor after dropping me off. Small pleasures....
- 63 5y agoI believe your story highlights precisely why more elevators don't include that functionality.
- cunthorpe 5y agoNo it doesn't. You can't prevent people from being a-holes and stealthily pressing 10 buttons before leaving the elevator. The feature as described is as useful as pressing a floor to stop on. Perhaps it makes more sense on smaller elevators than it does in large ones. Or perhaps it would make more sense to allow undoing a press only within the first few seconds.
- strbean 5y agoIn at least one elevator I rode in as a kid, pressing every button resulted in everything being de-selected.
- graup 5y agoIn South Korea, pretty much all elevators have this enabled. Pressing a floor button a second time cancels the request. It's pretty useful (if not abused).
- urbandw311er 5y agoThis has made my day. I have spent much of the last decade campaigning to anyone who would listen for the existence of a feature such of this to nullify accidental button presses in an elevator.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoOne time when working as a pentester, we were doing redteaming (read: breaking into target buildings, physically). Well, they were doing redteaming; I always wanted to, but never quite got the opportunity. One of the ideas thrown around for achieving the objective was to somehow get ahold of an elevator key, stop it, and hide in there until the building closed. I don't know if they actually did that, but it would've been hilarious to see them pop out like a scoobie doo villain and jack into an ethernet port while the janitor has no idea what's going on.
- 542458 5y agoThere’s a legendary defcon talk about elevators where the speaker describes doing exactly that on several occasions. Searching “Defcon Elevator” on YouTube should pull up the video in question.
- bombcar 5y ago“Somehow get an elevator key” is very easy - they’re all the same (at least the fireman’s are).
- mpd 5y agoI ran into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUvGfuLlZus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUvGfuLlZus (Elevator Hacking: From the Pit to the Penthouse) awhile back, and it was so interesting to me that I ended up watching the entire 2 hours in one sitting.
- banana_giraffe 5y agoAnother such list is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Special_operating_modes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator#Special_operating_mod... Wiki lists a "Riot mode", which is just amazing if it's a thing.
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoIt has different names on different manufacturers, but yes it is a thing.
- svat 5y agoDonald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming has, in its first volume, a lengthy section on simulating an elevator. It is a single regular elevator (nothing "special" going on as in the post here), but even so, as he tries to make things precise, you realize how much detail is involved, and get some appreciation for the task of programming. It occupies about 15 pages (plus several pages of exercises and solutions). Knuth started working on TAOCP when he was a PhD student at Caltech: > The program developed below simulates the elevator system in the Mathematics building of the California Institute of Technology. The results of such a simulation will perhaps be of use only to people who make reasonably frequent visits to Caltech; and even for them, it may be simpler just to try using the elevator several times instead of writing a computer program. […] > The algorithm we will now study may not reflect the elevator’s true principles of operation, but it is believed to be the simplest set of rules that explain all the phenomena observed during several hours of experimentation by the author during the writing of this section. […] > The elevator system described above is quite complicated by comparison with other algorithms we have seen in this book, but the choice of a real-life system is more typical of a simulation problem than any cooked-up “textbook example” would ever be. It ends with: > It is hoped that some reader will learn as much about simulation from the example above as the author learned about elevators while the example was being prepared. And one of the exercises adds: > It is perhaps significant to note that although the author had used the elevator system for years and thought he knew it well, it wasn’t until he attempted to write this section that he realized there were quite a few facts about the elevator’s system of choosing directions that he did not know. He went back to experiment with the elevator six separate times, each time believing he had finally achieved a complete understanding of its modus operandi. (Now he is reluctant to ride it for fear that some new facet of its operation will appear, contradicting the algorithms given.) We often fail to realize how little we know about a thing until we attempt to simulate it on a computer.
- iaw 5y ago> We often fail to realize how little we know about a thing until we attempt to simulate it on a computer. I'll often write out with pen and paper of how I think the flow of a model will go, it's always fascinating how much that diagram changes once I actually build the model. There are both drastic simplifications and increases in nuance based on experience with the system being modeled and where divergences occur.
- trhway 5y ago"pet mode" reminded about my cat many years ago - we lived on the 5th floor of an apartment building, and going outside the cat would walk the stairs down, yet coming back the cat would sit near elevator on the ground floor until somebody would come to use the elevator and everybody knew that "the white cat rides to the 5th floor" so they would let him out there.
- grensley 5y agoMy favorite interview question is "how do elevators work"? 0. If they immediately blurt out something like "I know how elevators work", probably don't hire them. 1. You can find out what areas they're most interested in. Do they jump straight to the physical mechanics? The programming? The UI? The abstraction that they're solving a problem? 2. Eventually, they reach a point where they just have to say "I don't know". The rabbit hole really just keeps going with elevators. You could know this question is coming and we will still easily reach the knowledge boundary. 3. If they "don't know" you can ask them to guess how a system might work. Or give them time to research it and follow up with you later.
- flycaliguy 5y agoI did a design interview which involved drawing up an elevator control panel for an apartment building with 1000 floors. Me, trying to leverage my sense of humour I guess (oops) designed a system in which the presumed wealthiest users at the top were instantly recognized with a face scan and never had to see a panel of buttons. The rest were forced to use a basic number pad. Needless to say I didn’t get the job. Doesn’t help that when you google my name my father’s extensive work as a labour organizer tends to spook my potential boss…
- TeMPOraL 5y agoYour idea reminds me of a recent novella by Cory Doctorow, Unauthorized Bread. In there, there was an apartment tower with an elevator that had separate doors for poor and rich people (with the two groups living on different floors), and the poor people couldn't call the elevator when it was in use by the rich.
- tech2 5y agoSometimes fiction isn't too far from fact - https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/feb/02/penthouses-poor-doors-nine-elms-battersea-london-luxury-housing-development https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/feb/02/penthou... They've taken the easy way out here by separating the two groups however.
- lozf 5y agoDeviant Ollam & Howard Payne did a great talk on Elevator Hacking at Def Con 22. You can catch it at: https://archive.org/details/Defcon22_Talk29/DEF+CON+22+Hacking+Conference+Presentation+By+Deviant+Ollam+%26+Howard+Payne+-+Elevator+Hacking+-+From+the+Pit+to+the+Penthouse+-+Video+and+Slides.m4v# https://archive.org/details/Defcon22_Talk29/DEF+CON+22+Hacki... or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHf1vD5_b5I [01:00:15]
- BigJono 5y agoThis is one of my favourite talks ever. I couldn't have given less of a shit about the topic and wasn't expecting to watch more than 5 minutes of it. Nek minnut the video is ending and I wanted another hour of it haha.
- dlgeek 5y agoLook for "This key is your key, this key is my key" by the same pair. It's basically that.
- rozab 5y agoDeviant Ollam's talks are always first class. I also love this one, about physical pentesting in general: https://youtu.be/rnmcRTnTNC8 https://youtu.be/rnmcRTnTNC8
- aaron695 5y agoNot sure if it's still true, but if to pick up the emergence phone (but don't push the call button) you could often use DTMF tones to call a number for free.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoThe elevator in my building only lets you select one floor. Accidentally press the one above yours? Now you have to go there first. Any idea what the purpose of that is? Price discrimination? Abuse prevention? "Well, the ancient elevator did it that way and we want the new one to be the same" backwards "compatibility"?
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoProbably extremely aggressive nuisance prevention. You could try holding the wrongly selected button down for 3-5 seconds and see if that cancels the call so you can give another one.
- theHIDninja 5y agoThere is also riot mode, where it won't stop on the first floor. It's used to stop people from just running in off the street and using elevators.
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoThe floor or set of floors is usually configurable these days. Since in modern buildings you can have multiple entrance floors.
- k12sosse 5y agoI was electrocuted fucking around with an old elevator once. Now I just get on it and travel to my destination. :) A very humbling experience to have happen in front of your peers.
- teameat 5y agoAnother dumb story from "back in my day". When I was in college way back in 1976, me and my Best friend back then both had graduated early and had to live in the dorm the first year until we were 18. The dorm they made us stay in was 6 stories and had a crappy old elevator. Being a couple of goofy hacker types with nothing better to do on a weekend, we figured out how to get up on top of the elevator and to use the alternate control panel up there. We sat up there and could control it, people would get on, we could listen to them talk, stop the elevator between floors and they would get all scared, we would flicker the lights on and off, make it go to the wrong floor and so forth. Pretty fun stuff for a couple of nerds. We got bored with that pretty quickly until, 4 gals form the girls floor decided they were going to camp out in there and set the Guinness record for the longest stay in an elevator. Some of the bigger dudes knew that we had hacked the elevator and asked us if we wanted to mess them up. Well... Of course. So we got on top and were listen to them yakkedy yak. Then we took it to between the 6th and 5th floors and locked it in place, then opened the upper doors on the 6th floor where a bunch of guys with big trash cans full of water were waiting. We thought they were just going to douse them good. So we opened the ceiling trap door to the elevator with the lights off and those gals were screaming and squealing like crazy. Then come dude tossed a string of fire crackers in there followed by two giant Garbage cans of water right after that. Must have been at least a couple hundred gallons of water, who knows. Then we set the thing to go to the first floor and jumped off. Waiting on the first floor where a bunch of people who were in on it with cameras to capture the whole things as the doors opened it was like the seas parting and flooding out as these poor drenched young ladies came floating out. Picture was on the front page of the school paper "Guinness Elevator Record Attempt Drenched" or something. They called the cops and all that but no one squealed on us and it was all in good fun but to teach everyone a lesson they shut down the elevators for 3 weeks. Young people don't care, worth a climb of the stairs for all the fun! BTW, I ended up marrying one of the gals on the elevator and yes I told her I was in on it, later. She loved that for some reason :)
- smabie 5y agoA+ story loved it!
- MockObject 5y ago
- vintermann 5y agoALMOST HUMAN The thinking elevator, so the makers proudly say, will optimize its program in an almost human way. And truly, the resemblance is uncomfortably strong: it isn't merely thinking, it is even thinking wrong. (Piet Hein, 1973)
- praptak 5y agoThe elevator in the apartment building I currently live in has a quirk which adds ~2s to the travel. If you know this quirk you can save the ~2s on each use. So if you just pick the floor then it waits 2 seconds before closing the door. Obviously the elevator waits for the door to get fully shut before it starts moving. If you first press the "shut door" button and then the floor button, then the door shuts within any delays, which means the elevator starts moving 2 seconds earlier.
- AnssiH 5y agoInteresting. Mine has an even longer delay than 2s (3-4s?) so I always press the close-doors button which removes the delay, but it never occurred to me I could shave some additional milliseconds off by pressing the close-doors button before the floor selection button.
- praptak 5y agoIn my case pressing the close-doors button after the floor button does not do anything - it is as if the floor button sets the timer on the doors, which then cannot be changed by the close-doors button.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]