What is this? Anyone have a clue? It was mounted on the inside of our Westin Hotel room door.
I know, I could have asked hotel management. But you know—you check in late, catch an early flight the next morning… There’s not always time to satisfy curiosity.
9 Comments
The IR reader is for a remote so you don’t have to get up to turn on and off
You turn it on when you go to sleep and if anyone comes in then the alarm goes off. Its to make people feel safe and secur.
Guys its just a simple door alarm. It wire it has wire running to a sensor on the inside of the door jam.
Thanks, Chase. I’ve seen quite a few of these since.
You’re correct – it’s an INNCOM IR transmitter. It connects to the thermostat for energy savings. Designed for use in retrofit situations where a wired connection is not feasible. I believe that’s it’s sole purpose.
[…] makes sense. And it explains my earlier post, too. In fact, I received two interesting explanations simultaneously. The Mandarin […]
I hope they don’t start ringing up from the reception to complain there’s too much motion in your room or something. 😉
Thanks for your hypothesis, Tom! I’ve subsequently stayed in another hotel with a motion detector in the room, and this time I did ask. Answer to be published shortly in another “Hotel Oddities” post.
Interesting, I bet that was why we had the motion detector in our room in Spain
First time I saw one of these in a room I took it apart to make sure it wasn’t a spy cam. What I found in the manufacturer information indicated that it was a device that reported room occupancy back to a central system.
I believe what you have pictured here is an INNCOM S541 infrared wireless transmitter.
I’d imagine the primary reason is to make sure that they don’t have squatters (that is, that each room occupied is being billed), but you’d probably hear claims of being able to report occupancy to firefighters, emergency responders, etc.
Tom