Sep
12
2007
Can your washing machine page you when it’s done?
Posted by: heath in Dreams, TechnologyThat’s what happened in a dream I had last night.
David and I were on some kind of road trip, and stopped by my parents house to watch TV. I wandered into the laundry room and noticed a setting on the machine that allowed it to send an SMS to your mobile phone or pager device when the cycle was complete and the clothes were ready to be moved into the dryer.
How convenient.
What household product do you have that you would like to be “aware”?
September 12th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
When I had a house with a basement, I used a baby monitor with the squelch set such that the buzzer on the washer and dryer would turn on the receiver. Much more convenient that having to wear a phone or pager around the house (which assumes you might have something to clip it to).
I think that a long-overdue device is a stove monitor… people know better, but many forget and leave things going that eventually cause fires and smoke damages. I’ve also set something in the microwave to what I thought was 5 minutes only to discover much later that it was 55 minutes
So my oven idea would be a simple device that sensed heat and/or electrical current, and also movement nearby or from a special watch that people could wear that emits an RF ping every few seconds. If the person left the room and the stove eye was left on above a simmer, or if it detected flames or smoke, then it would alarm. So this would be a much more intelligen smoke detector.
Another device might be an intelligent water/juice jug that uses the same RF technology as RFIDs, but also senses the level of the contents. If someone attempts to put an empty container back in the fridge, the fridge could remind them to fill it up for the next person. A similar feature would be nice for a coffee machine.
Also, it seems overdue for smart vending machines. They should report back to the home office if something went wrong and keep track of how well their employees are stocking the machines.