The Internet of Things...

quote:

---

Smart Homes/Buildings

---

Amazon is supposedly starting a "secret" push into this area. LINK / I'll be interested to see if they can bring the price down, right now they're too expensive. I don't need a learning thermostat, just one I could change with an app on my phone would be good.

quote:

---

What are the road-blocks?

---

Consumer readiness is one. I was expecting the PS4/XBox One to become the hub of the smart house, but considering Sony focused on games and forced Microsoft to do the same and stop including the Kinect, it's not looking good for this generation. Maybe we'll be ready with the PS5 and XBox Two.

quote:

---

Security

---

Even though we've been using wireless locks in cars for many years, I'm still a bit leery of things like wireless front door locks. Same thing with hooking up my garage door to the Internet.

They are doing a lot of cool things with robotics right now. We may still be a good bit a way from Rosie the robot maid, but maybe we can get a lawn mowing roomba soon LINK /

I think you nailed it.

There is obviously some current need/utility in wireless connectivity to your thermostat, TV, security system/cameras, and lights. I think a lot of the other uses (wireless locks, appliances, etc.) are just seen as a novelty.

quote:

---

the new oral b electric toothbrush has bluetooth :nopunintended:

i want to laugh at the ridiculousness of this..but then realized i could use this to tell how long my kids are brushing their teeth and what nights they went to bed without brushing.

then i was like hmmmmm, here's a solution for a problem i didn't know i had until presented with the solution.

---

This is usually exactly why we see these "trivial" additions to things. People always just try to say they want to track them somehow or that it's useless. If there wasn't some person who had the issue and thought it'd be a good addition, it'd have never even been put in in the first place. If people weren't using it, they wouldn't waste the cost of putting it in there.

I wrote an app for fun to keep track of things in the refrigerator for my roommate and I. When you put in or take out something (for example, a beer), you just hit the plus or minus button, and if someone else is looking at it on their phone, they'll know what they have. It keeps track of when milk and eggs go bad as well and notifies you beforehand. It obviously sucks to start putting stuff in there for the first time, but it wasn't meant to be really complex anyway. My roommate was like "I don't think I'll ever use that. There's no reason to." Now, he uses that shite way more than I do. Every time he goes grocery shopping, he tells me how badass it is to be able to see what's in the fridge from the store to know what he needs.

Such a stupid, trivial little idea that took very little time to implement, and it ended up being incredibly useful.

quote:

---

I wrote an app for fun to keep track of things in the refrigerator for my roommate and I. When you put in or take out something (for example, a beer), you just hit the plus or minus button, and if someone else is looking at it on their phone, they'll know what they have. It keeps track of when milk and eggs go bad as well and notifies you beforehand. It obviously sucks to start putting stuff in there for the first time, but it wasn't meant to be really complex anyway. My roommate was like "I don't think I'll ever use that. There's no reason to." Now, he uses that shite way more than I do. Every time he goes grocery shopping, he tells me how badass it is to be able to see what's in the fridge from the store to know what he needs.

---

This is a good concept, but I don't think it will be useful until your fridge has a camera and can keep the inventory itself. At the very least voice commands. I just can't see many people going through the effort of keeping inventory themselves even though access to the information is very useful.

quote:

---

Red Dye Pills > Snitching Tooth Brush

---

but can i fire up my 'oral b' app at work and see the accumulated time spent 'on teeth' for each kid for the last 7 days and red bars for the days they skipped out on?

I completely agree. I never did it to ship to the masses. I was just toying with node and angular and made something for a little project I had with my buddy. Ever since, I've thought of ways to make it easier like adding a barcode scanner using an API to get info on it, but that would be just as much of a pain in the arse. Once we got everything in there once or twice, the database autocompletes while you type, and you just add the quantity. Like you said, though, until the refrigerator does it on its own, it's not something many people will do. He's an electrical engineer and I'm a software engineer so we're more likely to go through the growing pains.

What would be rad is if they started using NFC in packaging for that sort of thing. I built a prototype NFC app for "contact sharing" for business card distribution, and it performed really well. Put in the info, and you can write your info onto stickers, cards, wristbands, etc. and if someone has the app, it automatically starts it and adds the contact when you touch it to your phone. Nothing groundbreaking, but with that built into a fridge, it'd make this concept more viable. Touch the item to a spot, it's entered. When you pull it out, tap it, and it updates. NFC tags can be embedded in anything. Stickers, bracelets, business cards, etc. That's the only way I see it working in the near future.

In fact, one of the reasons I built it was because we wanted to make a "BeerBot" that was basically a moving ice chest with several types of beer in it, and it'd come to your location, dispense a drink, and go back to its charging stand. I got it avoiding walls with basic pathfinding using a Kinect for imaging and depth and coming to the location of the phone (approximately). In the end, it just ended up being too much work to really get done in terms of the actual moving parts. That app came out of it, though.

I went off rambling on the subject, but my point was that the idea was a really stupid and trivial idea. My roommate claimed he'd never use it, but in the end, it ended up being used way more than either of us thought. It was just a simple app built in a day that just happened to fill a need that someone didn't know they had.

quote:

---

I went off rambling on the subject

---

It was cool rambling

quote:

---

the idea was a really stupid and trivial idea.

---

I think it's a good idea, but the technology isn't there to execute it properly yet. I don't know how easy it is to integrate the app with Siri/OK Google, but now that both listen without needing to push a button, you should be able to say "OK Google, I added a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk to the fridge." or "Hey Siri, we're out of milk now." That would make it much more accessible.

quote:

---

Even though we've been using wireless locks in cars for many years, I'm still a bit leery of things like wireless front door locks. Same thing with hooking up my garage door to the Internet.

---

With 4096-bit encryption, using wifi locks, etc., are much more secure than actual keys. Just make sure you use a product that has encryption turned on by default.

is this where i point out that not only do i rarely lock my front door but i've gone to florida for a week on vacation and left a back window open so the cat could come & go?