Turned a tablet into an office assistant with Android & 3D Printer

Recently our Shif4 Payments Lithuania office in Vilnius opened the doors to its renovated floors. Before the renovation, employees were encouraged to bring ideas about what they want on new premises and provide suggestions. @JanasChatkevicius and @ViliusKraujutis volunteered to contribute by installing a room reservation tablet next to the meeting rooms. While Vilius during free time loves modeling and crafting objects from plastic using a 3D printer, Janas is fond of developing mobile apps, they were thrilled to be able to bring skills to the table and collaborate on this project.

Planning resources, tools and tasks

The goal was to improve the on-site meeting experience, and we've decided to implement it by leveraging technologies and gadgets. Before the coding and printing commenced, the preparation steps were taken. First, we examined the design plan of each office floor and meeting room to arrange an electricity setup. Next, we had to figure out how to conveniently mount tablets on the glass walls. We also wanted that the tablet would fit as a design element so it was important to make everything aesthetic. Once we resolved questions related to electricity and tablet mounting, we researched what kind of tablets we'd like to use and ordered them. Once tablets arrived, Vilius started working on designs for tablet cases. 

It's worth mentioning that during the planning phase the communication was an essential factor to foster logistics, distribute assignments and manage expectations.

Android app development

The app is built based on Android and is using Google Calendar API for integration with Google Calendar. The main tool used to create the application is Android Studio. The app is written in the Kotlin language and utilizes several well-known libraries, for instance, Koin for dependency injection, Room for data persistence, Coroutines for working with code that executes asynchronously or View Binding as such to reduce boilerplate code. 

There are several main features that the app solves in the office:

• Easy to see room's availability. When you want to see the overall picture of all office space availability or a specific room's detailed calendar, it's all present on one page.
• Occupying a room with a single tap. You can occupy a spot without any complex calendar digging hassle. If the meeting is over, vacate it with a single tap.
• Eliminates meeting disruptions. Find out if a meeting room is busy without intervening calls.

3D Printing experience 

For the tablet holder we had several important criteria that we wanted to meet: 

• It had to be Strong and secure, so no one could easily unplug it, or switch to a different application, with all buttons to be hidden.
• Match the size of the bezels around the screen and be attached to the wall as close as possible. 
• Good looking from both sides, especially given that the holder would be facing a glass wall. Also be a perfect fit to our stylish office interior. 
• It had to be sturdy so it would not move at all when someone touches it while using.

Happy to admit that we have been able to meet all our criteria with 3D printing options. It allowed us to make unique, minimalistic designs, which we could have never found to purchase in the World. It also let us be as precise as we needed to - tight fit - accuracy in parts of millimeters. 

We also were able to perform on our own schedule, without having to coordinate with shipping deadlines. Each holder was printed in 9 hours (overnight) in Vilius’ basement. Printing was done on the Original Prusa i3 MK3S 3D printer which Vilius assembled by his own hands at home more than 4 years ago.

And the last, but not the least advantage – is the price of course. 3D printing is relatively cheap - such items cost less than 0.2€ for electricity and around 3€ for filament (and a good-enough 3D printer for beginners starts at 300-400€, this particular printer kit, which Vilius used cost almost 800€).  

Wiring-up

In conclusion, the meeting rooms are equipped with Android tablets which are put in sleek space design cases printed with a 3D printer. The collaboration and the whole process was extremely rewarding as we learnt from each other. However, the best part of the journey is to see colleagues benefiting from our work.