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JImbrella
=========
JImbrella (portmanteau of "JI Umbrella") is a suite of tools that track
a number of umbrellas at the gate of Long Bin Building (LBL), Shanghai
Jiao Tong University. This is an ongoing project managed by JI Belief,
the aim of which is to shield everyone's commute from unexpected
precipitation.
Note that JImbrella is merely the software, and is independent from JI
Belief's project. It may be abandoned at any time should JI Belief find
a better competitor at tracking umbrellas. I, the developer of
JImbrella, is NOT affiliated with JI Belief except for the agreement to
develop, maintain and possibly provide sysadmin service for JImbrella.
This is open source software licensed under BSD-2-Clause.
Workflow
--------
Here is an image of what JImbrella would integrate with the workflow at
version 1.0.
For the time being, there are 20 umbrellas in service, each secured by
a physical lock on a umbrella stand. A respective key, which is held by
the security staff by default, is needed to unlock each one.
Anyone who wishes to borrow one of the umbrellas must fill in a jForm
answer sheet asking for the information as follows:
- Name
- Student/faculty ID
- Phone number
- Key number (must correspond to a lock with umbrella present)
JImbrella will poll jForm for recent answer sheets, and update its own
database accordingly. If a person is found to have borrowed their
second umbrella or beyond, or if they are blacklisted (due to bad
records), an SMS will be sent via an online service to them, warning
them of their violation of the Honor Code - ahem, no, Terms of Service.
(We do this because there is no way to tell jForm to reject particular
answer sheets. However, because the interval between two polls cannot
be infinitely small, the SMS warning might be way past the security
handing over the key.)
They will subsequently be handed the key to the lock, using which they
may temporarily possess and use the umbrella. The person is now called
a "tenant".
The tenant may possess the umbrella for up to 3 days, which JImbrella
interprets as 72 +/- 1 hours. Over this period, the tenant must keep
the keys, with which to return the umbrella.
In case the tenant has kept the umbrella past due, JImbrella will send
an SMS reminding them to return it. If no action is taken on the tenant
side for 48 hours, JImbrella will send a harsher SMS warning. The
details of JImbrella's social aspects are left to JI Belief.
JImbrella provides a web console for the administrators of JI Belief,
on which to:
- View or modify statuses of all umbrellas;
- View logs;
- View or modify the blacklist.
Of course, the admins will have to be authenticated. Apart from a web
console, which I will try to make JavaScript-free, a REST API will be
available, some of its endpoints open to the public.
Upon return, the tenant must hand over the umbrella and the key. Losing
or damaging either will lead to human intervention, and is out of scope
of JImbrella. Given both the umbrella and the key are intact, the
tenant must fill in another jForm asking the same questions as the one
above, to finish the cycle.
This project is WIP.
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