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> Imagine a bottle of laundry detergent that can sense when you’re running low on soap — and automatically connect to the internet to place an order for more.

by gipp 9y ago

> Imagine a bottle of laundry detergent that can sense when you’re running low on soap — and automatically connect to the internet to place an order for more. Why. Why why why do all IoT-related articles always use awful consumer goods examples like this. Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. There are so many good ideas and existing uses of IoT tech outside of the consumer goods sector, and pretty much every application in the consumer goods sector is hot garbage, and consumers know it.

wyager 9y ago
Doesn’t stop them from buying it. Even if my tech-illiterate friends are vaguely aware that e.g. “smart TVs” are, in fact, dumb as shit, they still prefer them to simple TVs.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It's not like they have a choice. That's the magic of the consumer market - people don't buy what they really want, they choose from what's available. Companies are focusing on improving smart TVs instead of offering dumb ones, so if one wants e.g. a good, high-tech display, one usually has to accept the "smart" "features" that come with it.
sweezyjeezy 9y ago
> There are so many good ideas and existing uses of IoT tech Could you give some examples? I've yet to hear a single IoT thing I'd be willing to pay money for.
- candiodari 9y ago
  I find wifi lightbulbs very useful.
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of people don't realise how useful until they actually try them. For example getting home and having the lights turn on that you'll need automatically. Before we had to navigate our way to the other side of a open plan room in the dark to find a light switch, now the motion sensor triggers the Hue bulb. Plus we have a dimmer without needing an electrician to install one, and can set other colors of light for the mood or to improve the atmosphere of a movie. You can get started with Philip's Hue for $50 (on Black Friday) and at that price point it is well worth it for a lot of benefits/circumstances.
    - lostmsu 9y ago
      I got my house filled with motion activated lights at less than $10/piece
      - Someone1234 9y ago
        Perhaps but I bet they aren't as flexible. You're paying for that flexibility and functionality (multi-color, dimmable, etc). For one example imagine if you're away on holiday but want to give the impression somebody is home, you'll need to invest in a timer, with Hue you've already got that.
        icebraining 9y ago
        "invest" You mean, pay $5? Plus it works for other stuff besides lights (we turned on a radio too).
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Before we had to navigate our way to the other side of a open plan room in the dark to find a light switch That's not a matter of trying them, it's whether you live in a house with a crappy installation. A switch on every entrance is a basic requirement. I agree that if you're renting, fixing those problems yourself for $50 can be useful, though.
    - fmj 9y ago
      If you're more technically inclined you can get started for much less. You can get an ESP8266 individually for $5, and its only a few more dollars for a relay or a couple of MOSFETS depending on what you want to control. You can use the Homie for ESP8266 framework to take care of the boilerplate, and build functional device that communicates over MQTT in less than an hour. Most open source home automation software supports MQTT and you can use habridge to emulate Phillips Hue devices if you want to integrate it with an Echo or other commercial device.
  - cube2222 9y ago
    In the winter season, the hue sunrise mode is a great help to waking up well. (when it's still dark outside)
  - yellow_postit 9y ago
    I’ve found zwave/wifi switches to be much cheaper to outfit a whole house with.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Just yesterday, it occurred to me that an IoT thermostat would be nice (if and only if it doesn't mean that a server failure results in me freezing). Right now, I have the choice of heating the house all day (thus wasting heat = energy = money while I'm not home), or coming back to a cold house, turning up the thermostat and then having to wait 1-2 hours until the room is pleasantly warm. (My apartment is understaffed in the heater department and I cannot change that easily since I'm renting.)
  - tome 9y ago
    Timed thermostats would probably get you 90% of the way there.
  - jononor 9y ago
    You get timer-based units that reduce the temperature at night (optionally also when you are at work). They cover a good chunk of the usecase and will give good amounts of savings. No Internet, mobile app or machine learning needed.
  - wmil 9y ago
    Programmable thermostats have existed for a long time and it's easy to find internet enabled ones these days. The problem is that you're renting so you can't do any cool home automation stuff.
    - grogenaut 9y ago
      thermostats are trivial to change if you have any electronics or handy skills, just don't put new holes in the wall that aren't hidden by the mount plate if you're renting. It's basically like replacing the shower head while renting.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    It's quite easy and cheap to make a wifi-connected thermostat yourself. I did it, it's great. I made a web interface so that I can control it with my phone when I'm not at home. It is based off an ESP8266 placed in the boiler which controls a relay to tell the boiler whether to heat or not, and an ESP8266 in my office that has a temperature probe and a rudimentary user interface, and runs a web server to allow remote temperature inputs, and controls the ESP8266-relay over WiFi. The 3d-printed enclosure is rather coarse, but does the job: https://img.jes.xxx/1585 https://img.jes.xxx/1585 EDIT: Failure of the system could result in you freezing, but that's true of anything that controls your heating, and at least this is a device you understand are in control of, and it doesn't rely on anything outside your house. If it fails and you're freezing, just short the terminals of the relay while you debug it.
- henrikeh 9y ago
  From my personal experience: crop and greenhouse monitoring. There is an interest in having more data, from off-grid sensors across a wider area.
- pas 9y ago
  IoT furniture + tags. Put stuff [with tags] into cupboards and whatever, and when you're looking for something you can locate it [via that damn' app], so cheap & green tags would be nice. Similarly tagging stuff that you bring yourself to any group event (let's say you are an event organizer and you hand out things and you want to easily account for them). Sole pressure monitors in shoes would be great to detect problems with stance/gait/load, etc.
  - photojosh 9y ago
    I've thought of doing this for all the stuff kids need for school, plus our own keys etc. Rather than "IoT" tags, I'm of the opinion that we should use dirt-cheap (a few ¢ each, rather than $10+ for a full "IoT tag") RFID tags, and have a reader that can be accessed by a phone over Bluetooth (or have a few permanently installed around the house). Just need to drive the cost of the readers down.
    - pas 9y ago
      Ah, yes, there's no "IoT" tech, it's just BLE (Bluetooth low energy) beacons and RFID tags, and whatever is out there. I'm a bit astonished how it still costs 15 EUR for a BLE thingie. :o
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  No, but here's a bad idea I tried. My HP printer can reorder ink when it runs out. Sadly, that all got balled up almost immediately. The offer came with a mailer for exhausted cartridges. I put them in the mailer, put the mailer in the box (rural route). My spouse mistook it for incoming mail, ripped it open, said "Why is HP sending us empty printer cartridges?" Fortunately HP had a button to click on the web site to get another mailer mailed to me. I clicked, got the mailer (which was entirely different from the one that came with the offer) and sent the cartridges off. That was weeks ago. No new ink. My credit card continues to be debited monthly, but the printer is defunct and now what? These things are so, so prone to getting in a wad and leaving you frustrated. More work than actually buying new cartridges as needed.
  - hinkley 9y ago
    Essentially you need one spare for this system to work. Which is great for them because it front loads cartridge sales.
    - cr0sh 9y ago
      I said "no more" to printer cartridges over a decade ago. I rarely print things, and when I do, it's usually black ink on white paper. I was always running out of black ink, or, because of infrequent usage, my inkjet cartridge/head would be clogged. I was so sick of it. I just wanted to hit "print", and have the printer spit out the page - like I could at my employer. What did my employer use? A laser printer. So I started looking into it. The last time I had, such printers were still expensive, but they had come down in price. But even better, because of this, businesses and others were getting rid of their "old and slow" b/w laser printers and upgrading to faster color ones. I eventually found my first laser printer at a computer surplus outlet. It was an HP Laserjet 6M - I paid $100.00 for it, but it didn't have a cartridge. It was a gamble, but I asked the place if I could return it if it didn't work, they said "sure". I went to a local ink cartridge and printer ribbon store I knew about (they were an old-time fixture here, they even sold typewriter ribbons! Sadly, they no longer exist), and told them my dilemma - I needed a cartridge to test with, I didn't know if the printer worked. They gave me a mostly used cartridge from their refill pile, and told me to bring it back and they'd refill it for me if it worked! Grateful, I took it home and plugged it in. It worked perfectly! I ran the self-test, and the printer only had about a 25000 page count - a baby! These old LaserJets are tanks, and that was a very low page count. I took the cartridge back, and got it refilled. Total score! Some time went by, eventually I upgraded the memory to the max (8 MB using common SIMMs) and got the PostScript board for it (so now it is technically a 6MP). It still chugs away, prints when I want it to, I just have to keep feeding it paper - which is rare, because I don't print much. I'm also only on my third cartridge; I can get them fairly cheap from multiple places, and still a lot of business use these tanks because they are so damn reliable. It isn't a fast printer, but I don't need this thing to spit out a book a minute, just a page here and there; I can wait. One of the best computing purchases I ever made. Years later I found a 5P at a Goodwill with the cartridge. I fired it up in the store, and it too had a very low page count (around 15K). Bought it for $25.00 and stuck it in my shop - I also bought the postscript board for it as well. My original intention was to use it for printing toner transfer PCB art, but costs for PCB fabbing have dropped low enough that it isn't really worth it. So I just keep it if and when my 6MP dies... I figure I'll pass away long before these workhorses do.
- jpindar 9y ago
  If you shop at stores that have a modern cash register, buy gas at most gas stations, drive through most traffic lights, etc. you are using the IoT whether you know it or not.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Those were around before IoT was even a word, POS registers and gas stations haven’t changed much since the 90s. Traffic lights ditto, many haven’t been upgraded since the 80s. If that is what you mean by IoT as just a rebranding of things that have been around for a long time?
    - jpindar 9y ago
      As someone who makes industrial electronics, it's frustrating when people redefine the term IoT. It originally meant anything on the internet that isn't a general purpose computer (or a phone), but now some people define it to refer only to a subset of consumer products. That's given rise to the term IIoT (industrial IoT), but it's still troublesome since some discussions of IoT refer to both kinds and some don't, and because the exact same piece of hardware can be IoT or not IoT depending on whether it is installed in a home or a business. Surely discussions of IoT security should refer to both industrial and consumer products!
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        IoT never had that meaning. It stems from CMU smart devices work (1982) and ubiquitous computing (1991). Gas station and retail POSs as well as smart traffic lights predate that and aren’t related. Maybe some people have decided to take IoT literally and redefine it to include existing technologies, but that definitely wasn’t the original intention of the word.
        kbenson 9y ago
        > Gas station and retail POSs as well as smart traffic lights predate that and aren’t related. > Maybe some people have decided to take IoT literally and redefine it to include existing technologies I'm pretty sure it's normal to take new descriptive terms and group preexisting things into them where applicable. For example, just because the terms "car" and "motor car" came into use circa 1895 doesn't mean that nothing prior to that date can be considered a car. Whether the definition actually works for the devices mentioned is still a valid question though. > that definitely wasn’t the original intention of the word. That's an odd thing to argue. We aren't talking about people who compute things when we talk about computers, are we? The original meanings of words are fairly inconsequential if over time the accepted meaning is something else.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Couple of monitoring ideas I have that I've yet to see implemented: "did I lock the doors" and "did I leave the gas cooker on".
  - noxToken 9y ago
    Smart locks are done. First result for smart locks is a PC Mag end of year review. See here: https://www.pcmag.com/article/344336/the-best-smart-locks https://www.pcmag.com/article/344336/the-best-smart-locks
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      GP was talking about monitoring. Answering the question, "did I lock the door", doesn't require an Internet-connected lock with electronics and actuators. A simple backscatter status reporter using the tech presented in this article would be more than enough. Ditto for the gas cooker. -- And speaking of smart locks - in the current IoT - that is, cloud-connected - version, they are just idiotic. Such things shouldn't be vendor-locked and their core functionality should be available over LAN. Even that PCMag article doesn't seem to recognize it, as they don't have an "works without Internet" row in their table.
      - noxToken 9y ago
        I'm definitely not an advocate. Anytime someone asks me about smart devices/IoT, my recommendations always defaults to "generic" devices. I think we give up too much of our privacy and control to vendors - especially when there are solutions that don't require cloud servers.
  - gnopgnip 9y ago
    Would it be possible to use passive RFID with a sensor to measure if the door is unlocked or the stove is on?
  - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
    My ideal version of this kind of monitoring is an interface that lets me teach an app what doing things in the house sounds like - new activity name: shut door and lock > record a few runthroughs; then log when it happens, offer push notifications, etc. I have an induction range that helpfully makes lots of beeping noises while many gas ones do not (but also turns itself off), so that would also be possible.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
golergka 9y ago
> Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. Hi, I'm your nobody. I'm constantly running out of soap and shampoo and other trivial home goods because I always forget that I need them until the moment I get back home. Why wouldn't I want a feature like that?
- DerfNet 9y ago
  Here's a simple solution: next time you buy soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc, buy two of them and put the one you're not using in a closet.
  - superb_herb 9y ago
    What about when you forget that you're already on bottle number two?
  - delinka 9y ago
    When the first one runs out, replace it with the second, and go buy another. You have a buffer to remember to buy the item for your backup inventory.
    - rdiddly 9y ago
      And the remembering is done by means of a list on your phone. When you run out, add it to the list. When you're at the store, check the list. Not techy enough for ya? Think of it as preserving state and passing it across time from "the you who knows" (senses a need) to "the you who does" (is at the store). Or as asynchronous communication with yourself.
      - Kiro 9y ago
        Or I just buy the automatic laundry soap ordering thing.
      - ggcdn 9y ago
        And if you want to get even more techy, get a google home and say "hey google, add soap to my shopping list"
superb_herb 9y ago
I dunno... I cook every day. I'd love a little gadget I can attach to my jug of olive oil or my sack of rice that will automatically ping Amazon to send more. Of course it's easy enough to do with my own eyes, but I'm usually too frazzled during and after cooking to update my shopping list...
- kortex 9y ago
  So the solution is a better kitchen management experience / assistant / whathaveyou, not a dumb "smart" widget that fires off when you run out of oil.
peterwwillis 9y ago
The consumer sector is a great way to make money. People love buying stupid gadgets. And people already schedule purchases on Amazon every month - the sensor method is just an extension of this to save money/prevent waste. Eventually, if any company actually tries to do it right, sensor-driven consumer goods will become the norm. There's too many actually productive uses for sensors in the home for it not to be pursued. "Convince Me Why Washer Must Talk to Grill" https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323077 https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323... The other reason you only see this stuff in the consumer sector is that non-consumer use of IoT is a hot garbage fire. Mesh networks used for industrial sensor tracking at scale are shit, no matter what high or low level protocols you use, and nobody has developed standards ubiquitous and unencumbered enough for everyone to adopt. And everyone already has connectivity for the devices and sensors that need them.
- delinka 9y ago
  "...save money/prevent waste" until it malfunctions and buys me a few hundred dollars worth at once. Or gets hacked and buys someone else a few hundred dollars worth at once.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    This already happens without IoT.
api 9y ago
It's not about whether or not you want to have it. It's about monetizing you. These features could be included in products without your knowledge and could communicate with other surveillance devices (Echo, Smart TV, Google Home, etc.) to relay to advertisers and product vendors information about your use of the product. This in turn could be used to sell hyper-targeted ads such as ads for detergent that are timed precisely for when you are low on detergent. Your attention is one of the most valuable products in the world. Sub-dividing and parceling off that attention in as fine-grained a manner possible is extremely profitable. I'm really concerned about this. It's not ads I'm worried about but the long term potential for truly unethical misuse of this technology. Combined with AI this stuff could be used to build psychological models on every human. The potential for misuse by everyone from governments to criminals is just insane. We are building the infrastructure for a hellish dystopia just to get people to click ads.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Hellish dystopia would at least be interesting, TBH. The current situation is pathetic. The way we're building our infrastructure is showing our worst side as a species. The capacity to screw others to get a little ahead. The total disinterest in how much aggregate damage one is causing for often very little personal gain. This is sickening to watch, and in fact it's also the same aspects that give rise to dystopian scenarios in real life.
- ataturk 9y ago
  Just like crypto, unless you yourself code and design the thing, you can't trust it at all. This is what we're down to. I don't even trust operating systems anymore unless they are open source. Freaking Windows 10 is spyware.
- cr0sh 9y ago
  > This in turn could be used to sell hyper-targeted ads such as ads for detergent that are timed precisely for when you are low on detergent. I'm not really sure what the point of that would be? Maybe my wife and I are in the minority, but we purchase exactly one brand of detergent, and we haven't switched in a very long time (that said, we switched to this detergent because it was less irritating to our skin than the other brand product we had been using). We are pretty much the same with other products we buy on a regular basis; we don't brand hop unless there's a very good reason to, and sometimes we'll go out of our way to stick with a particular brand if we have to and can. We certainly don't do so because of advertisements (we don't watch television, and throw away the various adverts we get in the mail, and I only listen to NPR). Maybe other people brand hop all the time because of a commercial they see. I'm not sure what to think about that, if that's the case
worldsayshi 9y ago
> Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. I wouldn't say that. I think that everyone would want it if it didn't add more work, cost or mental overhead than it would remove. And to do that it would have to be ridiculously reliable and simple and be integrated into the products rather than work as an add-on. That won't happen for many years for many of those products.
- new_hackers 9y ago
  reliability was my first thought with these. It is a very clever technique. However, the mechanical spring properties would seem to be very important. I'm sure they have designed the spring to be in an approximately linear stress/strain region, but material creep seems like it would be more prevalent than traditional engineering materials. Perhaps if the lifespan of these objects is relatively short, then they would satisfy the reliability goal.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I cringed at that too, but to be honest, this is the least ridiculous implementation of the "automatically order consumables from Amazon" idea - because all the prior versions required you to buy an expensive piece of electronics to mount on something that itself is ~100x cheaper. Here we have a disposable dumb device with no electronics, that could be 3D-printed or mass-produced via the usual techniques. That said, the usual caveats to this idea apply: it's too easy to have the device order stuff when you don't need it or don't order stuff when you need it, and I definitely don't want to tie myself to a particular retailer.
- walls 9y ago
  > because all the prior versions required you to buy an expensive piece of electronics $4.99 is an 'expensive piece of electronics'?
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Anything over a few pennies is too much to put on a bottle of detergent in the factory. And putting it on at home is foolish - more work than just reordering detergent myself when it runs out.
    - tgb 9y ago
      The previous posts are presumably referring to the Amazon Dash Button: https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011 https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=106678980...
      - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
        I use a Dash button in my bathroom to automatically order toilet paper. It's great because I never remember to do that before its "too late", and its still MY CHOICE to press the button. Nobody wants individual toilet paper packages stuck with their own tracking devices, at least not now. It's weird that articles like to push that idea, rather than more simple examples people might use.
mungoid 9y ago
Whenever I see those pointless uses of IoT, I pretty much just think of the SkyMall catalog. Lots of neat things that nobody will ever really use.
sambe 9y ago
Amazon already offers such buttons but I haven't used them. I can certainly imagine that being convenient, although I'd want them to be a) unbranded/programmable; b) optionally adding to a shared shopping list rather than directly ordering c) possibly a bit more subtle and/or smaller in size.
zzzeek 9y ago
> Why. Why why why do all IoT-related articles always use awful consumer goods examples like this. because consumer goods manufacturers have the big bucks to throw at research like this
PascLeRasc 9y ago
That's just the headline to make it relatable to a big audience. What would you use instead?
zodPod 9y ago
I cringed at that as well! This is absolutely amazing tech why use it for such mundane and lame things? Especially, like you said, to order things for me automatically. I absolutely would never want something ordering more of itself on its own. I'd guess maybe they did it for funding? "See? Our product can make you money!"
slantaclaus 9y ago
The application is not as important as the technology itself
chesimov 9y ago
I also don't fully understand the attention given to home consumables in these kinds of IoT applications- for me devices like Amazon's one press ordering button thing are better for this type of problem as it keeps you in the loop while still saving you the time. It's actually the automated purchasing that saves me time - not the automated sensing that something is running out. I already see that incidentally (often as part of my day) and in a second. Edit: the physical re-ordering button I referenced is called the Amazon Dash; it's not exactly what I thought it was but it's pretty close.
King-Aaron 9y ago
> Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. I think you substantially underestimate the apathy of the broader consumer market...
cwei932 9y ago
Yeah but to the retailers, it must sound great: - Recurring revenue - Frictionless transactions - Vendor lock in To a business, this stuff is irresistible. Of course consumers would hate this. But consumers also hated DRM, and they managed to shove that down our throats.

by gipp 9y ago

wyager 9y ago

Doesn’t stop them from buying it. Even if my tech-illiterate friends are vaguely aware that e.g. “smart TVs” are, in fact, dumb as shit, they still prefer them to simple TVs.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
It's not like they have a choice. That's the magic of the consumer market - people don't buy what they really want, they choose from what's available. Companies are focusing on improving smart TVs instead of offering dumb ones, so if one wants e.g. a good, high-tech display, one usually has to accept the "smart" "features" that come with it.

sweezyjeezy 9y ago

> There are so many good ideas and existing uses of IoT tech Could you give some examples? I've yet to hear a single IoT thing I'd be willing to pay money for.

candiodari 9y ago
I find wifi lightbulbs very useful.
- Someone1234 9y ago
  Unfortunately a lot of people don't realise how useful until they actually try them. For example getting home and having the lights turn on that you'll need automatically. Before we had to navigate our way to the other side of a open plan room in the dark to find a light switch, now the motion sensor triggers the Hue bulb. Plus we have a dimmer without needing an electrician to install one, and can set other colors of light for the mood or to improve the atmosphere of a movie. You can get started with Philip's Hue for $50 (on Black Friday) and at that price point it is well worth it for a lot of benefits/circumstances.
  - lostmsu 9y ago
    I got my house filled with motion activated lights at less than $10/piece
    - Someone1234 9y ago
      Perhaps but I bet they aren't as flexible. You're paying for that flexibility and functionality (multi-color, dimmable, etc). For one example imagine if you're away on holiday but want to give the impression somebody is home, you'll need to invest in a timer, with Hue you've already got that.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        "invest" You mean, pay $5? Plus it works for other stuff besides lights (we turned on a radio too).
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Before we had to navigate our way to the other side of a open plan room in the dark to find a light switch That's not a matter of trying them, it's whether you live in a house with a crappy installation. A switch on every entrance is a basic requirement. I agree that if you're renting, fixing those problems yourself for $50 can be useful, though.
  - fmj 9y ago
    If you're more technically inclined you can get started for much less. You can get an ESP8266 individually for $5, and its only a few more dollars for a relay or a couple of MOSFETS depending on what you want to control. You can use the Homie for ESP8266 framework to take care of the boilerplate, and build functional device that communicates over MQTT in less than an hour. Most open source home automation software supports MQTT and you can use habridge to emulate Phillips Hue devices if you want to integrate it with an Echo or other commercial device.
- cube2222 9y ago
  In the winter season, the hue sunrise mode is a great help to waking up well. (when it's still dark outside)
- yellow_postit 9y ago
  I’ve found zwave/wifi switches to be much cheaper to outfit a whole house with.
majewsky 9y ago
Just yesterday, it occurred to me that an IoT thermostat would be nice (if and only if it doesn't mean that a server failure results in me freezing). Right now, I have the choice of heating the house all day (thus wasting heat = energy = money while I'm not home), or coming back to a cold house, turning up the thermostat and then having to wait 1-2 hours until the room is pleasantly warm. (My apartment is understaffed in the heater department and I cannot change that easily since I'm renting.)
- tome 9y ago
  Timed thermostats would probably get you 90% of the way there.
- jononor 9y ago
  You get timer-based units that reduce the temperature at night (optionally also when you are at work). They cover a good chunk of the usecase and will give good amounts of savings. No Internet, mobile app or machine learning needed.
- wmil 9y ago
  Programmable thermostats have existed for a long time and it's easy to find internet enabled ones these days. The problem is that you're renting so you can't do any cool home automation stuff.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    thermostats are trivial to change if you have any electronics or handy skills, just don't put new holes in the wall that aren't hidden by the mount plate if you're renting. It's basically like replacing the shower head while renting.
- jstanley 9y ago
  It's quite easy and cheap to make a wifi-connected thermostat yourself. I did it, it's great. I made a web interface so that I can control it with my phone when I'm not at home. It is based off an ESP8266 placed in the boiler which controls a relay to tell the boiler whether to heat or not, and an ESP8266 in my office that has a temperature probe and a rudimentary user interface, and runs a web server to allow remote temperature inputs, and controls the ESP8266-relay over WiFi. The 3d-printed enclosure is rather coarse, but does the job: https://img.jes.xxx/1585 https://img.jes.xxx/1585 EDIT: Failure of the system could result in you freezing, but that's true of anything that controls your heating, and at least this is a device you understand are in control of, and it doesn't rely on anything outside your house. If it fails and you're freezing, just short the terminals of the relay while you debug it.
henrikeh 9y ago
From my personal experience: crop and greenhouse monitoring. There is an interest in having more data, from off-grid sensors across a wider area.
pas 9y ago
IoT furniture + tags. Put stuff [with tags] into cupboards and whatever, and when you're looking for something you can locate it [via that damn' app], so cheap & green tags would be nice. Similarly tagging stuff that you bring yourself to any group event (let's say you are an event organizer and you hand out things and you want to easily account for them). Sole pressure monitors in shoes would be great to detect problems with stance/gait/load, etc.
- photojosh 9y ago
  I've thought of doing this for all the stuff kids need for school, plus our own keys etc. Rather than "IoT" tags, I'm of the opinion that we should use dirt-cheap (a few ¢ each, rather than $10+ for a full "IoT tag") RFID tags, and have a reader that can be accessed by a phone over Bluetooth (or have a few permanently installed around the house). Just need to drive the cost of the readers down.
  - pas 9y ago
    Ah, yes, there's no "IoT" tech, it's just BLE (Bluetooth low energy) beacons and RFID tags, and whatever is out there. I'm a bit astonished how it still costs 15 EUR for a BLE thingie. :o
JoeAltmaier 9y ago
No, but here's a bad idea I tried. My HP printer can reorder ink when it runs out. Sadly, that all got balled up almost immediately. The offer came with a mailer for exhausted cartridges. I put them in the mailer, put the mailer in the box (rural route). My spouse mistook it for incoming mail, ripped it open, said "Why is HP sending us empty printer cartridges?" Fortunately HP had a button to click on the web site to get another mailer mailed to me. I clicked, got the mailer (which was entirely different from the one that came with the offer) and sent the cartridges off. That was weeks ago. No new ink. My credit card continues to be debited monthly, but the printer is defunct and now what? These things are so, so prone to getting in a wad and leaving you frustrated. More work than actually buying new cartridges as needed.
- hinkley 9y ago
  Essentially you need one spare for this system to work. Which is great for them because it front loads cartridge sales.
  - cr0sh 9y ago
    I said "no more" to printer cartridges over a decade ago. I rarely print things, and when I do, it's usually black ink on white paper. I was always running out of black ink, or, because of infrequent usage, my inkjet cartridge/head would be clogged. I was so sick of it. I just wanted to hit "print", and have the printer spit out the page - like I could at my employer. What did my employer use? A laser printer. So I started looking into it. The last time I had, such printers were still expensive, but they had come down in price. But even better, because of this, businesses and others were getting rid of their "old and slow" b/w laser printers and upgrading to faster color ones. I eventually found my first laser printer at a computer surplus outlet. It was an HP Laserjet 6M - I paid $100.00 for it, but it didn't have a cartridge. It was a gamble, but I asked the place if I could return it if it didn't work, they said "sure". I went to a local ink cartridge and printer ribbon store I knew about (they were an old-time fixture here, they even sold typewriter ribbons! Sadly, they no longer exist), and told them my dilemma - I needed a cartridge to test with, I didn't know if the printer worked. They gave me a mostly used cartridge from their refill pile, and told me to bring it back and they'd refill it for me if it worked! Grateful, I took it home and plugged it in. It worked perfectly! I ran the self-test, and the printer only had about a 25000 page count - a baby! These old LaserJets are tanks, and that was a very low page count. I took the cartridge back, and got it refilled. Total score! Some time went by, eventually I upgraded the memory to the max (8 MB using common SIMMs) and got the PostScript board for it (so now it is technically a 6MP). It still chugs away, prints when I want it to, I just have to keep feeding it paper - which is rare, because I don't print much. I'm also only on my third cartridge; I can get them fairly cheap from multiple places, and still a lot of business use these tanks because they are so damn reliable. It isn't a fast printer, but I don't need this thing to spit out a book a minute, just a page here and there; I can wait. One of the best computing purchases I ever made. Years later I found a 5P at a Goodwill with the cartridge. I fired it up in the store, and it too had a very low page count (around 15K). Bought it for $25.00 and stuck it in my shop - I also bought the postscript board for it as well. My original intention was to use it for printing toner transfer PCB art, but costs for PCB fabbing have dropped low enough that it isn't really worth it. So I just keep it if and when my 6MP dies... I figure I'll pass away long before these workhorses do.
jpindar 9y ago
If you shop at stores that have a modern cash register, buy gas at most gas stations, drive through most traffic lights, etc. you are using the IoT whether you know it or not.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Those were around before IoT was even a word, POS registers and gas stations haven’t changed much since the 90s. Traffic lights ditto, many haven’t been upgraded since the 80s. If that is what you mean by IoT as just a rebranding of things that have been around for a long time?
  - jpindar 9y ago
    As someone who makes industrial electronics, it's frustrating when people redefine the term IoT. It originally meant anything on the internet that isn't a general purpose computer (or a phone), but now some people define it to refer only to a subset of consumer products. That's given rise to the term IIoT (industrial IoT), but it's still troublesome since some discussions of IoT refer to both kinds and some don't, and because the exact same piece of hardware can be IoT or not IoT depending on whether it is installed in a home or a business. Surely discussions of IoT security should refer to both industrial and consumer products!
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      IoT never had that meaning. It stems from CMU smart devices work (1982) and ubiquitous computing (1991). Gas station and retail POSs as well as smart traffic lights predate that and aren’t related. Maybe some people have decided to take IoT literally and redefine it to include existing technologies, but that definitely wasn’t the original intention of the word.
      - kbenson 9y ago
        > Gas station and retail POSs as well as smart traffic lights predate that and aren’t related. > Maybe some people have decided to take IoT literally and redefine it to include existing technologies I'm pretty sure it's normal to take new descriptive terms and group preexisting things into them where applicable. For example, just because the terms "car" and "motor car" came into use circa 1895 doesn't mean that nothing prior to that date can be considered a car. Whether the definition actually works for the devices mentioned is still a valid question though. > that definitely wasn’t the original intention of the word. That's an odd thing to argue. We aren't talking about people who compute things when we talk about computers, are we? The original meanings of words are fairly inconsequential if over time the accepted meaning is something else.
pjc50 9y ago
Couple of monitoring ideas I have that I've yet to see implemented: "did I lock the doors" and "did I leave the gas cooker on".
- noxToken 9y ago
  Smart locks are done. First result for smart locks is a PC Mag end of year review. See here: https://www.pcmag.com/article/344336/the-best-smart-locks https://www.pcmag.com/article/344336/the-best-smart-locks
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    GP was talking about monitoring. Answering the question, "did I lock the door", doesn't require an Internet-connected lock with electronics and actuators. A simple backscatter status reporter using the tech presented in this article would be more than enough. Ditto for the gas cooker. -- And speaking of smart locks - in the current IoT - that is, cloud-connected - version, they are just idiotic. Such things shouldn't be vendor-locked and their core functionality should be available over LAN. Even that PCMag article doesn't seem to recognize it, as they don't have an "works without Internet" row in their table.
    - noxToken 9y ago
      I'm definitely not an advocate. Anytime someone asks me about smart devices/IoT, my recommendations always defaults to "generic" devices. I think we give up too much of our privacy and control to vendors - especially when there are solutions that don't require cloud servers.
- gnopgnip 9y ago
  Would it be possible to use passive RFID with a sensor to measure if the door is unlocked or the stove is on?
- blacksmith_tb 9y ago
  My ideal version of this kind of monitoring is an interface that lets me teach an app what doing things in the house sounds like - new activity name: shut door and lock > record a few runthroughs; then log when it happens, offer push notifications, etc. I have an induction range that helpfully makes lots of beeping noises while many gas ones do not (but also turns itself off), so that would also be possible.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

golergka 9y ago

> Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. Hi, I'm your nobody. I'm constantly running out of soap and shampoo and other trivial home goods because I always forget that I need them until the moment I get back home. Why wouldn't I want a feature like that?

DerfNet 9y ago
Here's a simple solution: next time you buy soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, etc, buy two of them and put the one you're not using in a closet.
- superb_herb 9y ago
  What about when you forget that you're already on bottle number two?
- delinka 9y ago
  When the first one runs out, replace it with the second, and go buy another. You have a buffer to remember to buy the item for your backup inventory.
  - rdiddly 9y ago
    And the remembering is done by means of a list on your phone. When you run out, add it to the list. When you're at the store, check the list. Not techy enough for ya? Think of it as preserving state and passing it across time from "the you who knows" (senses a need) to "the you who does" (is at the store). Or as asynchronous communication with yourself.
    - Kiro 9y ago
      Or I just buy the automatic laundry soap ordering thing.
    - ggcdn 9y ago
      And if you want to get even more techy, get a google home and say "hey google, add soap to my shopping list"

superb_herb 9y ago

I dunno... I cook every day. I'd love a little gadget I can attach to my jug of olive oil or my sack of rice that will automatically ping Amazon to send more. Of course it's easy enough to do with my own eyes, but I'm usually too frazzled during and after cooking to update my shopping list...

kortex 9y ago
So the solution is a better kitchen management experience / assistant / whathaveyou, not a dumb "smart" widget that fires off when you run out of oil.

peterwwillis 9y ago

The consumer sector is a great way to make money. People love buying stupid gadgets. And people already schedule purchases on Amazon every month - the sensor method is just an extension of this to save money/prevent waste. Eventually, if any company actually tries to do it right, sensor-driven consumer goods will become the norm. There's too many actually productive uses for sensors in the home for it not to be pursued. "Convince Me Why Washer Must Talk to Grill" https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323077 https://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1323... The other reason you only see this stuff in the consumer sector is that non-consumer use of IoT is a hot garbage fire. Mesh networks used for industrial sensor tracking at scale are shit, no matter what high or low level protocols you use, and nobody has developed standards ubiquitous and unencumbered enough for everyone to adopt. And everyone already has connectivity for the devices and sensors that need them.

delinka 9y ago
"...save money/prevent waste" until it malfunctions and buys me a few hundred dollars worth at once. Or gets hacked and buys someone else a few hundred dollars worth at once.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  This already happens without IoT.

api 9y ago

It's not about whether or not you want to have it. It's about monetizing you. These features could be included in products without your knowledge and could communicate with other surveillance devices (Echo, Smart TV, Google Home, etc.) to relay to advertisers and product vendors information about your use of the product. This in turn could be used to sell hyper-targeted ads such as ads for detergent that are timed precisely for when you are low on detergent. Your attention is one of the most valuable products in the world. Sub-dividing and parceling off that attention in as fine-grained a manner possible is extremely profitable. I'm really concerned about this. It's not ads I'm worried about but the long term potential for truly unethical misuse of this technology. Combined with AI this stuff could be used to build psychological models on every human. The potential for misuse by everyone from governments to criminals is just insane. We are building the infrastructure for a hellish dystopia just to get people to click ads.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Hellish dystopia would at least be interesting, TBH. The current situation is pathetic. The way we're building our infrastructure is showing our worst side as a species. The capacity to screw others to get a little ahead. The total disinterest in how much aggregate damage one is causing for often very little personal gain. This is sickening to watch, and in fact it's also the same aspects that give rise to dystopian scenarios in real life.
ataturk 9y ago
Just like crypto, unless you yourself code and design the thing, you can't trust it at all. This is what we're down to. I don't even trust operating systems anymore unless they are open source. Freaking Windows 10 is spyware.
cr0sh 9y ago
> This in turn could be used to sell hyper-targeted ads such as ads for detergent that are timed precisely for when you are low on detergent. I'm not really sure what the point of that would be? Maybe my wife and I are in the minority, but we purchase exactly one brand of detergent, and we haven't switched in a very long time (that said, we switched to this detergent because it was less irritating to our skin than the other brand product we had been using). We are pretty much the same with other products we buy on a regular basis; we don't brand hop unless there's a very good reason to, and sometimes we'll go out of our way to stick with a particular brand if we have to and can. We certainly don't do so because of advertisements (we don't watch television, and throw away the various adverts we get in the mail, and I only listen to NPR). Maybe other people brand hop all the time because of a commercial they see. I'm not sure what to think about that, if that's the case

worldsayshi 9y ago

> Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. I wouldn't say that. I think that everyone would want it if it didn't add more work, cost or mental overhead than it would remove. And to do that it would have to be ridiculously reliable and simple and be integrated into the products rather than work as an add-on. That won't happen for many years for many of those products.

new_hackers 9y ago
reliability was my first thought with these. It is a very clever technique. However, the mechanical spring properties would seem to be very important. I'm sure they have designed the spring to be in an approximately linear stress/strain region, but material creep seems like it would be more prevalent than traditional engineering materials. Perhaps if the lifespan of these objects is relatively short, then they would satisfy the reliability goal.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I cringed at that too, but to be honest, this is the least ridiculous implementation of the "automatically order consumables from Amazon" idea - because all the prior versions required you to buy an expensive piece of electronics to mount on something that itself is ~100x cheaper. Here we have a disposable dumb device with no electronics, that could be 3D-printed or mass-produced via the usual techniques. That said, the usual caveats to this idea apply: it's too easy to have the device order stuff when you don't need it or don't order stuff when you need it, and I definitely don't want to tie myself to a particular retailer.

walls 9y ago
> because all the prior versions required you to buy an expensive piece of electronics $4.99 is an 'expensive piece of electronics'?
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Anything over a few pennies is too much to put on a bottle of detergent in the factory. And putting it on at home is foolish - more work than just reordering detergent myself when it runs out.
  - tgb 9y ago
    The previous posts are presumably referring to the Amazon Dash Button: https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011 https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=106678980...
    - ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
      I use a Dash button in my bathroom to automatically order toilet paper. It's great because I never remember to do that before its "too late", and its still MY CHOICE to press the button. Nobody wants individual toilet paper packages stuck with their own tracking devices, at least not now. It's weird that articles like to push that idea, rather than more simple examples people might use.

mungoid 9y ago

Whenever I see those pointless uses of IoT, I pretty much just think of the SkyMall catalog. Lots of neat things that nobody will ever really use.

sambe 9y ago

Amazon already offers such buttons but I haven't used them. I can certainly imagine that being convenient, although I'd want them to be a) unbranded/programmable; b) optionally adding to a shared shopping list rather than directly ordering c) possibly a bit more subtle and/or smaller in size.

zzzeek 9y ago

> Why. Why why why do all IoT-related articles always use awful consumer goods examples like this. because consumer goods manufacturers have the big bucks to throw at research like this

PascLeRasc 9y ago

That's just the headline to make it relatable to a big audience. What would you use instead?

zodPod 9y ago

I cringed at that as well! This is absolutely amazing tech why use it for such mundane and lame things? Especially, like you said, to order things for me automatically. I absolutely would never want something ordering more of itself on its own. I'd guess maybe they did it for funding? "See? Our product can make you money!"

slantaclaus 9y ago

The application is not as important as the technology itself

chesimov 9y ago

I also don't fully understand the attention given to home consumables in these kinds of IoT applications- for me devices like Amazon's one press ordering button thing are better for this type of problem as it keeps you in the loop while still saving you the time. It's actually the automated purchasing that saves me time - not the automated sensing that something is running out. I already see that incidentally (often as part of my day) and in a second. Edit: the physical re-ordering button I referenced is called the Amazon Dash; it's not exactly what I thought it was but it's pretty close.

King-Aaron 9y ago

> Nobody, or next-to-nobody, would want to have that. I think you substantially underestimate the apathy of the broader consumer market...

cwei932 9y ago

Yeah but to the retailers, it must sound great: - Recurring revenue - Frictionless transactions - Vendor lock in To a business, this stuff is irresistible. Of course consumers would hate this. But consumers also hated DRM, and they managed to shove that down our throats.