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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: 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?
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(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!