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Christophe Deschamps was watching a basketball game with his wife and three children when he received an alert on his smartphone.
The home security system told him something was wrong, so he quickly accessed the video feed on his phone.
"I could see smoke," he says. Their home, in the Wallonia region of southern Belgium, was on fire.
The family's thoughts immediately turned to their two Bernese Mountain dogs - Lisbonne and Hawaii - locked in the garage. A terrible family tragedy was threatening to unfold.
The video images now showed the smoke getting thicker and brightness coming from flames off-camera.
The fire alarm had already alerted the firefighters, so the Deschamps family rushed home as quickly as they could.
...
Fortunately, Lisbonne and Hawaii were saved with just 20cm of air left to breathe above the floor of the smoke-filled garage. But the fire damage to the house took six months to repair.The dogs' lucky escape was due to the indoor security camera Christophe had installed.
So, the Internet of Things (IoT) is really a good thing.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:02AM (4 children)
Maybe if they hadn't locked the dogs in a damn garage, the dogs would have been perfectly safe anyway.
Isn't this why you have pet-doors and the like?
And I'd be much more concerned about the fecking neighbours and gas lines, etc. than the dogs in the garage. "It was more important for us to save the dogs than the house," - You're an arsehole. Not even any mention of alerting neighbours (hey, we have a smartphone, wonder how we could do that?)
And their lucky escape was NOTHING to do with the camera. It was to do with the fire alarm that had already alerted firefighters, and which set off the camera by its noise (not even by a specific relay / alert line? Come on people). If that fire alarm has been linked to the smartphone instead, you wouldn't have had to log on, rely on the interpretation of a cheap computer vision instrument, and lucky cameras angles, to diagnose that the house was on fire. It would have actually alerted you sooner, and you could have got home sooner, and saved the dogs sooner.
In this case, reliance on IoT actually made things SLOWER and LESS RELIABLE than just buying a fire alarm that texts you when it activates.
P.S. What was the cause of the fire? Because no amount of IoT can combat stupidity.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:18AM
the fire started in the cheap chinese transformer needed by the smart thermostat or something
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:46PM
In this case, reliance on IoT actually made things SLOWER and LESS RELIABLE than just buying a fire alarm that texts you when it activates.
Indeed, or as they did in the "olden days" -- the fire alarm would send an alert to the security company, who would then call you. We can obviously automate this process more easily now, but I don't get what the video camera has to do with anything here. Home security systems have been offering similar services for decades; no video camera streaming to a smartphone necessary. Fire alarms would have registered the alert.
What I particularly resent about this story is that it seems like a weird sort of advertisement, because "saving the family pet" is so emotionally manipulative in a lot of contexts. Anyone ever been to a movie where bad guys and good guys do whatever (with little audience reaction), but everyone cheers when the family dog or whatever is saved?
By the way, I'm not as down on the Internet of Things as a concept as some people seem to be. In some cases, there can obviously be helpful features. It's just that they're often so poorly implemented, the IoT buzzword is often about creating hype more than functionality, and frequently the use cases just seem pretty unlikely ("Now your toaster can be on the internet! Why wouldn't you want that?!").
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:17PM (1 child)
Just letting your dogs wander the streets and poop on everything is frowned on these days...
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday May 09 2017, @08:23PM
It's called a fence.
Or a kennel.
Or a large caged area.
So the dog moves around rather than sits in a garage that they can't escape if something goes wrong.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday May 09 2017, @11:00AM (3 children)
IoT version:
The cheap chinese transformer of the smart thermostat is overheating because of the carefully engineered obsolescence programmed in it since it was designed.
That triggers the smart thermostat built into the transformer itself which alerts the thermostat which alerts the home security system.
The home security system quickly assesses the dangers. Family is away but the IR signature of the two dogs says they are humping each other in the garage.
The home security system then chooses which path to follow. A couple seconds later the decision has been finalized, a Korean restaurant has won the bid for roasted dog meat, a mafia linked enterprise will rebuild the burned down house with help from the insurance which has found another excuse to raise everybody's premium.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:45PM (2 children)
the IR signature of the two dogs says they are humping each other in the garage.
Sooner or later we're gonna have IoT where the service revenue plan is going to involve posting user data like the above to exotic pr0n sites.
Also you know the stereotype of every fire department has the secret firebug arsonist on the squad who literally gets off from house fires, well, usually thats a little rough on the local population not to mention the local home insurance agent, but if he could just pay some money to join a website full of IoT video recordings of house fires, sure that dude is pretty weird but its a net gain to society if the weirdo doesn't set our house on fire and we get free or subsidized by his subscription in house fire detection monitoring. And obviously the weirdo is also going to be happy.
There's probably weirdos who get off watching sewers back up. I mean as a variant of rule 34 there's weirdos who get off from everything. So it would be possible to start an IoT company to use a video camera to monitor a sewer drain and the instant it starts backing up they'd alert you. Now thats not free to provide, but don't forget the weirdos who are "stimulated" by watching sewers back up, they'll pay to join a site to watch historical recordings. So I get free or at least discounted 24x7 sewer video monitoring and alerting, the weirdo is happy, sounds good to me.
What I need to find is someone who gets off on kernel panics and network unable to ping. Then I could record that stuff and sell it to weirdos and use their subscription fees to fund my 24x7 monitoring system...
Hmm... might be on to something here. Or on something. Either way its an interesting idea. Or an interesting sci fi book plot.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:47PM (1 child)
How about visible-through-pants-bright-blue-LED cock jewelry with built in camera that automatically takes dick picks and uploads them to teh clouds while comparing their friends dick sizes in real times. Bring a whole new meaning to the word "Internet of Things".
.
.
.
Aw shit! That would actually sell like hotcakes! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:01PM
Yep, if anything, you are some 10 years too early for that but we are getting there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:12PM
It's not that the potential for good doesn't exist, it's that the implementation is usually not perfect, and the potential for bad stuff is equally great.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bart9h on Tuesday May 09 2017, @12:57PM (2 children)
Why couldn't he just open the garage door with from his smartphone?
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:15PM
Because his cloud service subscription did not activate that tier of functionality. And even if it had, he would have spent half an hour digging through the anti-friendly user interface that was designed explicitly to mine usage data from him, and it would have lagged as all of that data got sent back to China/India and new advertising and updates got uploaded, and an AI automatically determines if this is the optimal action. The error message would be along the lines of "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
(Score: 5, Funny) by butthurt on Tuesday May 09 2017, @03:53PM
He'd left an unfavourable review of the garage door opener?
/article.pl?sid=17/04/06/0136225 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:03PM (4 children)
It seems like every few months some big story comes up about how some fancy new thing saved someones life or does something unexpectedly good, and everyone is just supposed to forget about all of the downsides.
Sometimes the downside is just a huge monthly bill, or that the new fancy thing is 99.999% useless, but the "Internet of Things" is much worse. Spying on people, potential for massive advertising abuse, over complicating formerly simple products, security disasters, just to name a few.
If you had go all the way to Belgium to find one "good" use, that is a real stretch.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:17PM (3 children)
Yup!
Install this IoT thing that is sooooo easily hacked, and put it in your house attached to cameras, so we can watch you.
I see, SomeGuy, that your masturbating to Police Academy 3... And your dog is also watching you. NICE!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by SomeGuy on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:25PM (2 children)
Well, you know, I TOLD them I didn't want that Trane ComfortLink II(TM) XL 850 Connected Control, but as it turns out modern furnace/blowers are intentionally designed to be incompatible with earlier non-spyware models. That is actually my neighbor's dog watching me through my document scanner, but it works out as we both like Police Academy... PROCTOR!!!! Lols.
BTW, I knew you were going to post that, I could hear you typing through your dishwasher. Also BTW, when you are near it you might want to refrain from mumbling about how you like to touch... people... it might get misinterpreted.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 09 2017, @02:45PM (1 child)
CHEEZIT, THE COPS!!!!
I'm watching them coming to our front door: your fake talking parrot in the cage has that one odd (camera) eye, and is connected to the internet through your Tickle Me Elmo doll.
RUN!!!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday May 09 2017, @06:46PM
I'm so out of touch, only my microwave turns into a camera.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:11PM (4 children)
WHY would you put these things on the internet?! Why do I need to check the expiration date on the milk in my refrigerator???
Well, I'm being half serious. This is a compelling story about what modern technology can accomplish. It's very clearly a marketing piece masquerading as a human interest story. On the other hand, how many other people have access to that video feed?
I like tech otherwise I wouldn't be here on SN. However, I don't think I could ever trust an internet-enabled anything unless I'd built it and coded it myself. (The S in IoT stands for security as it's often said.) I have the know-how. Just haven't been able to prod myself to spend time on it. I think we should lobby congress next time DST come up and demand that they redefine a day as having 72 hours.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:35PM (2 children)
> expiration date on the milk
You can't trust that either. Many people unquestioningly believe such dates, and throw out perfectly good milk because it is one or two days past the date, rather than trust their sense of smell and taste. People are so easily scared into feeling that milk and food can go bad but still taste good. The taste of spoilage can be disguised with enough seasoning and some other tricks, but not perfectly. Last time I bought milk from Target, I saw that they'd dated it only 3 days hence. I wondered why Target was selling milk so close to its expiration date. But the milk lasted 2 weeks. Target is using an overly conservative date, seems it's "sell by" not "good until". Braums on the other hand is fairly accurate, but still a bit conservative, stays good at most 3 days beyond their date. Sometimes their milk does go bad on the date they give. If milk has gone bad, you'll know it.
People have more faith in gadgets, like a Milk Freshness Sensor, just dip it in the milk and get a reading in seconds! Or, even better, Laser Powered Milk Freshness Detector, just aim it at the milk, no contact necessary! Or they could, you know, use their noses.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 09 2017, @05:55PM (1 child)
Liability is probably why.
If someone gets sick the profit gain may be lost quickly. And personnel may forget something sometime so there has to be a margin.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Tuesday May 09 2017, @10:22PM
Wouldn't it be more likely due to the "lather, rinse, repeat" principle that mythically doubled shampoo sales?
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09 2017, @01:45PM
But, but, but, do you hate goggies? Do you like seeing cute little goggies burn? If you don't buy IoT stuff then you are an evil goggie hater!
Here, we will put more blue LEDs in it, then you will like it, and you can save goggies!
(Score: 1) by a-zA-Z0-9$_.+!*'(),- on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:47AM
Great news.
https://newrepublic.com/article/114112/anonymouth-linguistic-tool-might-have-helped-jk-rowling