Fresh off the announcement of their truly ridiculous $1,200 LG Urbane Luxe smartwatch, LG is announcing something much more useful. At IFA 2015, LG has taken the lid off their new sensors that aim to bring your dumb appliances (devices without a wifi connection) into the future and connect them to the internet of things.
Currently your device functions on its own and does its thing. With these sensors, you can monitor things like temperature and vibration to sense changes in operation. Dryer stopped vibrating? Time to grab your clothes and start folding. The devices will use AllJoyn, a system by which devices can communicate information to other devices around them. This may be something as simple as a push notification to your phone about that laundry we mentioned or setting up a program to run on multiple ovens and cooktops to automate the cooking of your dinner to have it done at the exact time you want it.
LG will also raise the curtain on the Smart Lightwave Oven and Smart Air Conditioner which have the same AllJoyn connectivity. The Smart Lightwave Oven can alert you to when your food is done and the Smart Air Conditioner can do it one better by letting you know when you have to replace your air filter! Pretty cool stuff.
What do you think? Do we need a new wave of connected appliances or is this just innovation for innovation’s sake? Will this catch on or will it be go the way of consumer 3D TVs? Let us know in the comments where you see this technology going.
Source: AndroidCentral
There are a number of issues that are going to be interesting to watch.
First, are people really wanting to be notified all of the time to run here, run there, do this, do that … all by their appliances? And if I get notified, and then ignore it, what occurs? Reminders?
Second, there is a huge difference between the line-powered devices, and the battery powered devices. As batteries begin to die, then what? Oh yeah, I get my notice to replace the battery. And how often will that occur? With hundreds(?) of devices permeating my house it could mean a lot of notifications.
It is still SO early in the IoT and real integration of connected products into our lives … people who have not been working with a LOT of devices have not yet run into the overwhelm issues.