Bill Virgin: Smart sensors could add to convenience
By now you’ve run into at least one reference to smart thermostats, refrigerators and, if the speaker is being a bit smart-alecky, toasters — household appliances that by virtue of low-cost, miniaturized sensors and processors and high-speed high-capacity wireless networks can not only swap information but do something with it.
Your refrigerator could detect that you’re low on milk, or that the apples in the produce bin are getting a bit past prime condition, and not only will it send you an alert but place an order to the online grocery of your choice, which will deliver said items to you.
Such anecdotal tales of the power and potential of the Internet of Things have a circa-1955 “we’ll all be driving flying cars by 1975” feel to it. Whether you really find monitoring the quantity and quality of your refrigerator’s contents to be so burdensome a task that it requires automating is beside the point.
