This tiny sensor is shaped like a peanut and tracks temperature changes



Sen.se, the smart home company behind the slightly creepy hub called Mother, is back with a handful of tiny, single-purpose sensors meant to be scattered around your home. The line of devices are called SensePeanuts, and the first one being unveiled is the ThermoPeanut, meant to track temperature wherever you put it.
The ThermoPeanut is weirdly what it sounds like. It’s a peanut-shaped gadget that tracks temperature. It uses Bluetooth — so it doesn’t require a hub — to connect directly to iOS and Android devices. It’ll record temperature ratings as often as you program it to, and then report those readings back to an app. It can measure temperatures from -5 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit (or, for those of you with more sensible measurement systems, -20 degrees Celsius to 60 degrees Celsius).
It’s a really simple gadget, but Sen.se is hoping that owners can turn it into something much more useful. It can be pared with Nest Thermostats to control when the heat or air conditioning goes on. Or it can hook up to IFTTT — a service that lets apps and gadgets trigger actions in other apps and gadgets — to do an assortment of useful and strange things.



The ThermoPeanut goes on sale today for $29. Later this year, Sen.se will add a sensor called the SleepPeanut, which will probably look like a peanut and measure an individual’s sleep patterns, another called the PeanutButton, which is basically just a dedicated IFTTT button that you can assign three different actions to, and finally the MedPeanut, which is meant to let caretakers monitor pill dispensers to make sure medication is being taken.
Additional Peanut units will come next year. Sen.se is currently planning ones called the SafePeanut, which has something to do with security; the ProximityPeanut, which sounds likea the HydraPeanut, basically a leak detector; and the DoorPeanut, to tell if a door is open or closed.
Most of these aren’t particularly innovative. But Sen.se’s idea of making a line of products that all look cute and similar and work in simple ways should make these devices among the easier methods of stepping into smart home monitoring. And in a market that’s crowded with confusing white boxes that may or may not work with your existing gadgets, that’s not a bad idea at all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11

Image
DirectX 12 vs DirectX 11 – How DX12 will transform PC  gaming on Windows 10 DIRECTX 12 VS DIRECTX 11 – WHY DOES IT MATTER? Windows 10  has arrived and, along with integrated Cortana, Xbox One game streaming and a fancy new web browser, one of its key features is DirectX 12, the latest version of the operating system’s gaming API. A software layer that sits between the hardware that powers our computers and the software that runs on them,  DirectX is at the heart of the vast majority of games that run on Windows.  The other major gaming API is OpenGL, which as its name suggests is an open source API. Both offer very similar key functions, but it’s DirectX that tends to be at the heart of most bigger games. Microsoft talks up the amazing new capabilities for every new release of DirectX, but with DirectX 12 it really does have some key new features, at least when it comes to improving performance. It also has some new effects tools and functions for making games look bett
Read more

Android N's "Freeform Windows"

Last week, we wrote about the " freeform window " mode in the Android N Developer Preview. Brief mentions in the developer documents and hints in the code pointed to Android someday displaying apps in resizable floating windows, just like in a desktop OS. Freeform window mode isn't normally accessible in the current dev preview, but shortly after the post, we were contacted by reader  Zhuowei Zhang  with instructions on how to make it work. We'll get to the instructions, but first let's talk about what's actually here. Freeform window mode is just what we imagined. It's a dead ringer for  Remix OS —multiple Android apps floating around inside windows—and it might be the beginnings of a desktop operating system . It works on Android N phones and tablets, and once the mode is enabled, you'll see an extra button on thumbnails in the Recent Apps screen. To the left of the "X" button that pops up after a second or two, there will be a s
Read more

The Chord Mojo turns good headphones into great ones

Image
The best gadget you never knew you wanted Audio processing isn’t sexy. Better sound doesn’t lend itself to easy marketing through numbers or pretty posters, and so many companies treat it as an afterthought when designing their products. The  blissful ignorance  of "good enough" audio pervades the world of consumer technology, leaving only a niche of audio enthusiasts supporting a few boutique hi-fi manufacturers. Things have been like this for quite some time, but recently a new gadget was introduced that bridges the gap between the many and the few, and its name is the  Chord Mojo . The Mojo is an audio processor and amplifier that’s smaller than a pack of cards yet delivers the awesome performance of much larger rivals. Honestly, I think its size works to its disadvantage because it looks like, and is, a portable unit you can plug into your phone and use off its 10-hour battery. By audiophile standards, it’s almost  too  practical. But those same aud
Read more