What 4,000 taps taught us about lab peak hours
We dug through a semester of session data across twelve labs. The pattern was consistent, surprising, and immediately useful for timetabling.
Stories, field notes and release notes from the people who build and run Lab Nexa, written for the staff and students who use it every single day.
For decades the paper logbook was the only record of who used a lab, for how long, and on which machine. It was also illegible, easy to lose, and impossible to analyse. Here is what changed when we swapped it for a single NFC tap, and what 4,000 sessions taught us about how labs really get used.
We dug through a semester of session data across twelve labs. The pattern was consistent, surprising, and immediately useful for timetabling.
Two hundred students, one spreadsheet, zero manual entry. A step by step guide for university admins, plus the three mistakes to avoid.
This release cuts live map refresh to five seconds, adds the four step guest request flow, and tightens session security across every role.
Small, unglamorous routines that take under a minute each, and consistently cut fault tickets across every lab we monitor.
A look under the hood at how tap tokens are generated, bound to devices, and rotated, plus the personal data we deliberately keep out of the system.
The priority score is not a ranking to argue with. It is a spending plan. Here is how to turn it into a maintenance schedule your technicians will actually follow.
An open session blocks a seat and skews the data. Here is why the two second tap out is the highest value habit in the whole system.
Room level occupancy hides the story. Seat level data shows which machines fail, which seats go unused, and where to put your next PC.
How the guest request flow works, why passes expire in four hours, and exactly what the supervisor sees when one gets approved.