Product Inspiration

In our continuing coverage of the evolution of the smart home, First Alert has just come out with some smoke alarms which communicate with each other and tell you where the fire is. It seems like a great step in the right direction, but its still missing a few features I’d like to see:

1. Does not mesh with existing wireless internet. Lots of us have wireless connections in our houses, why can’t we just add these guys to the network?

2. Will not tell me if my house is on fire when I’m away. Conventional smoke alarms are very loud, and I’ll probably hear them if I’m anywhere inside my house. What would be REALLY useful is if they would call / text / email me when my house is on fire so I could send over a neighbor to grab a few valuables / use an extinguisher.

3. Does not mesh with other home automation products (as far as I can tell). Granted, there’s no one single standard yet for connecting electronic household gadgets together, but it does not make sense long term to have a different wireless system for rain gauges, fire alarms, and lights. Hopefully, this will be sorted out soon.

At any rate, its another example of a dumb device getting smarter. Lets hope it keeps on learning.

http://www.gizmag.com/onelink-wireless-talking-networked-smoke-alarm/8 900/

Grabbing technology from one industry and applying it to another is a great ’shortcut’ to making a breakthrough product innovation (and something that we are very big on at PCDworks).

Here’s a perfect example: Power computer users have been using water cooling systems on their desktop PCs for years to keep the chips cool, allowing them to overclock the processor to run extra fast (and at higher temperatures). Some innovative soul realized that this fluid-based cooling design could be useful for regulating our own temperatures, and designed a mattress which uses tubes of fluid and a thermostat to change the temperature of the bed. If having a variable-temperature mattress isn’t good enough, there are two separate controls, so that any mates which share a bed can have different temperatures on their respective sides.

Can you think of any other good places to use fluid based temperature control?

http://gizmodo.com/336850/chilipad-regulates-bed-temperature-you-suppl y-the-hotness

Almost in time for the recent droughts that plagued the East coast, this system optimizes the watering of your lawn by using an integrated system of sprinklers and soil moisture sensors. As you can probably guess, the moisture sensors record how wet or dry the soil is, and the central controller uses this information to determine when and how much water to distribute to keep the grass green without wasting any water.

On one side, this seems a little trivial- many places have water in abundance, and most people aren’t lawn fanatics who care passionately about the health of their lawns. On the other side, global predictions for our planet show that fresh water will become an increasingly precious and scarce resource over the next few decades.

With this in mind, systems such as this one may become as widespread as catalytic converters on our cars, to the point that they could mandatory, and a lack of one produces the scorn of your neighbors and/or fines. On top of the regulatory issues, the increasing water prices will make these tools very cost effective in the long run, much like the smaller and more efficient hot water heaters that are going into so many new houses today.

http://www.gizmag.com/water-svaing-soil-moisture-monitoring/8459/

Technorati : smart home, sprinkler