What Tech I Want, I Think (Early 2019)

It has been a while since I've written about a list of current tech items that have caught my eye.  I thought that it might make sense to given that CES 2019 just ended.

What I Want:

1. Humon Hex: it tracks oxygen availability in your muscles (specifically your thigh).  It provides more direct feedback on how hard you are working (which I'd always wanted to know).  Maybe I'm being lazy or just feel tired when my body is capable of doing more - this gives you a much better sense of how true that is.  Cost: ~$300.  Availability: Immediate.
2. Garmin Vector 3 Power Meter: I have gotten used to having legit power meter information from the Stages spin bikes at the Equinox at which I am a member.  Going for outdoor rides now are not as information rich.  I much prefer the outdoor ride (in the right weather), and already have speed and cadence sensors, so this is the next step.  It's a lot of money, though.  Cost: ~ $900.  Availability: Immediate.
3. K'Watch Glucose: A continuous glucose monitoring watch.  It requires a consumable which needs to be replaced every 7 days, but it looks super cool.  I'd love to wear for a couple of months to see how my activities, eating, drinking, working out and all affect my blood sugar levels.  I feel like I'd learn a lot over the first month or two of wearing it.  Maybe not too much after that.  Cost: ~ $150 for the watch, $100/month for the consumable. Availability: Unknown, but hopefully in 2019.
4. LIDAR Lite v3HP: A small 40m range LIDAR from Garmin.  I would love to work this into a Raspberry Pi 3 project to build a small device that would measure speeds on the road in front of me and then post the fastest on a website along with vehicle pictures (with ALPR, ideally) and a graph of the distribution of the speed of cars on the road.  Maybe someday I'll get to this project.  Cost: $150.  Availability: Immediate.
5. Naked Labs Body Scanner: I know I drink too much beer to keep my gut in check, but I think it would be super cool to get a long term view of where fat is being added and removed as you move through time.  So you should have a much better view of the aggregate body fat, and also the view of where it's coming and going from.  Also, you get your weight.  Cost: $1495.  Availability: Q219, I believe.
6. Air Quality Monitor: I'm not sure that Awair is the one, but I would like something that tracked indoor air quality that was inexpensive enough that I could have several of them in my house.
7. A compact point and shoot camera: a successor to my Canon S100.  Not sure what's best out there now, nor what the right amount of money is.  Sometimes, the camera on my phone just doesn't capture the magic.

What I Don't Want

1. MagicLeap AR Eyeglasses: Not until somebody shows me software that matters.  Cost: $2295.
2. 8K TV: Not until most content is 8k.  I bought my current 65" Sharp LCD 1080p TV in 2008.  It's still pretty great.  When it fails, I will buy a 4k TV of similar size (we'll see about OLED).  In fact, I'm rather hopeful that the Samsung modular micro-LED approach gathers some steam and we get some cool options there.
3. Bike head's-up glasses: Way too much money.  Way too early in the product maturation cycle.  Same for a motorcycle helmet head's up display.
4. USB turn-table: Maybe a cool mix of old and new, but I'm not a vinyl guy.  Spotify for me, right now.
5. Glowing alarm clock: My Garmin Forerunner 935 vibrating works just fine.  I wake up at a different time than my wife, so I think that lighting the whole room up would be disruptive.
6. Any voice-activated appliance: I have an Echo Show and I like it.  I just don't feel the need for a microwave that has this built in.
7. Any robot: call me when they are actually useful for more than vacuuming.
8. HTC Vive Pro Eye: but only because I don't have the space to devote to it right now.  Also, having bought the original Vive, I feel like there isn't enough software for it.

If I think of anything more, I'll add to the list.

Sleep Well!

Another gadget that you didn't know you needed.  Kudos on a perfect product name for this gadget.  My only question is whether it will fit over a mattress with a pad on the top (mine). I'm going to wait for this one to hit the street and get some real-world experience.

Recent Moments of (Gadget) Weakness

Yesterday, I bought a fitbit Surge after reading all about the watches on display at CES.  Today, I ordered an Amazon Echo.  The latter won't be here until mid-year, but I'm expecting the Surge in about a week.  I'll be posting shortly when I've had a chance to gain some experience with it.

Day 8: Rejected Ideas

As I have been working through the possibilities and ideas for this series of 7 Days, 7 Gadgets, I have had to reject a lot of ideas.  Many were just a bit silly, but quite a few had already been done before.  Here are a few:

• Combined washer/dryer  This would be super useful to just throw a load in and then take out dried clothes.  Space efficient, but not in-line with how most Americans do their laundry - they do a bunch at a time and want it done NOW!  Also, its already been done.
• Floating electronic pool chemical monitor  Already done.  But arguably, not well.
• Automatic wall painting device  Done, but not in a compelling way.  Lots of innovation available.  Frankly, routine use would be a key part of the innovation.  For use to be routine, it'd have to be more cost-efficient or provide some other meaningful advantage (lower insurance rates due to avoidance of people on ladders).
• Many other previous ideas.  I went back through my posts and tagged all that could have qualified.  I really wanted to use some of them, especially for Day 7.

Day 7: Tree Health Monitor

This post was a bit of a cheat.  I ran out of steam for the 7 Days 7 Gadgets series and only posted this on the last day:

DRAFT
Device to measure tree health through bark, ultrasound, laser on leaf and online supplement of leaf down coloration.  Alerts users to fertilize or water trees.

I'm updating now (2014-12-27) with some more thoughts and information, in other words, a complete post.

Genesis of Idea

In suburban America, one of the most important aspects of your property is the trees on that property.  However, as trees grow, numerous negative things can happen to them that make them dangerous or otherwise problematic to have on your property.  Controlling them, by getting somebody to come in and cut them down, is expensive and a giant hassle.  But, trees are beautiful and worth some measure of investment and time.  So, it would be great if people had better tools to monitor the health of their trees and make good choices about fertilizing and watering those trees.

Details

Prior to engaging in any sensing devices, the user of the TreeHealth system would first download and run the TreeHealth app.  The first step is to create a catalog of all of the trees on the property.  Ideally, the user would do this by walking around the property and pressing a button when they are standing next to a unique tree.  Using the GPS coordinates of the phone, the app would map out all of the trees.  If desired, the user could upload a view of their property's plat and walk to the four corners (for calibration) and map the trees on the property relative to the house.  Without knowing of any better means, the tree's height would have to be estimated.  A digital tape measure (like those used for measuring waist size) should be used for trunk circumference measurements (at ~6" off of the ground).  If the owner knew, they could enter the genus and species of the tree.  If they did not, they could use the app and identify it based on tree characteristics (like leaves and bark).  This should provide a first level view of the tree community on the owner's property.

In addition, the owner would be prompted to enter when the tree looks to be budding and the state of the tree shedding its leaves in the fall.  The dates (compared to the overall tree community in the owner's geographical area) could be another indicator of health.

The Gadget

The TreeHealth gadget would be a multi-sensor device that attaches to a phone (or better, a tablet) that can do the following:

• Measure leaf health via infrared sensors: owner would scan six leaves (enough for a valid sampling without harming the tree?).  My (admittedly weak) understanding is that this is useful for gauging overall health. 
• For larger trees, the owner would use something like a 3/8 hole saw blade to cut a shallow round hole through the bark, then place the ultrasonic sensor on that location.  This could measure the integrity of the tree's main trunk and identify any problems with internal rot and overall fluid/sap flow within the tree.  After the measurements, the owner would glue a special plug in the hole, designed to ensure that the tree was not damaged by the test (or by allowing a fungus or something else bad to get into the tree's systems).

Additional App Features

• Leave measurement: place six leaves on a 1x1" lined mat and take pictures of the leaves.  The meta data of the date will be helpful in keeping track.
• Height estimates: put an object of a known size next to the tree and snap a picture from a known distance away from the tree.  Verify it makes sense by using trunk circumference information.
• CO2 tracking: tell the user how much CO2 was sequestered in their yard.  I'm sure that this will make somebody feel good.  Additionally, if there is a known relation to house height and location, the app could estimate electricity saved from cooling during the summer.
• Fertilization and watering reminders.  Based on geographic weather data, alert user if trees should be getting water stressed.  Suggest watering strategies that will maximized absorption and minimize run-off.

I think that the largest value of this approach is in the continuous monitoring from year to year of the trees.  They don't grown super quickly, so we should have to worry about long term engagement from the user.  Not sure how to do this, but it's probably worthwhile to a local landscaping shop that could be selling to the user year after year.

Day 6: Aftermarket HVAC Booster

My house isn't that big, but one segment of it remains materially cooler than the others.  Yes, I've adjusted the dampers, but it still doesn't work well.  The solution: an integrated system of register fan boosters and temperature sensors tied into your smart thermostat.  Key features:

• Compatible with a range of "smart thermostats".  Key output is sending a signal to turn the HVAC fan on.
• Register boosters turn on when the temperature in the room is materially different from the thermostat setting (directionally correct depending on heating or cooling).  The register boosters are aware of the main HVAC system's fan running and are only running when the main fan is running.
• Alternately, allow user to install fans in the duct to provide a similar boost (but have it tied to thermometers in a room or a couple of rooms).

So this is sort of a gadget that appends to the end of your existing HVAC control system.  Not sure how easy this would be to integrate into Nest, but there are definitely some Z-Wave controllers for which this could be easily implemented.

Day 5: Active Chair

Sitting too long and being sedentary is supposed to be bad for your health.  Lets' change that by having our chairs move so that we are forced to reposition ourselves.  Key features:

• Chair setup would require information about user's body, work surface height and any chronic pain.  The user could choose the amount of time between shifting chair positions and the degree of difficulty.  Degree of difficulty could be slowly increased over time.  Setup done via app that communicates with chair via bluetooth.
• Chair would then restrict itself to a range of heights and positions.
• Every 5 minutes or so the chair would adjust itself, forcing the user to shift and potentially engage some of their core muscles to balance
• If the user needed a break, they could request one via the app.  Or turn it off during a phone call.
• Track user sitting behavior.  Beep if user has been sitting too long.

Key problems

• Chair would likely have to be plugged in given the amount of power required to shift a full-grown adult.  Cord could be a hassle.
• Noise, if used in a cubical environment.
• Cost.  Though people do spend a lot on fancy Hermann Miller chairs.

One Step Beyond

• Add in message capability
• Keep track of benefit to user via the app.  Estimate extra calories burned, other health benefits.

Day 4: Trash Can Caddy

My boys are not very reliable with respect to taking the trash cans from the house to the edge of the street and back.  It's not a very hard thing to do, but I get much pushback (we do have a relatively long driveway) whenever I ask them to do it.  What I need is a rugged device that'll do it for me!

The Trash Can Caddy! (red = wheels, orange = control box, blue = support structure)

One Step Beyond

I have a trash can much like this one.  I envision the Trash Can Caddy (TCC) to work like the following:

• The caddy slips under the trash can with wheels on the outside of the can.
• Under normal, resting position, the TCC wheels are not supporting any weight, so that the can remain stationary.  Alternatively, if you have multiple smaller trash cans, this system could be built into one of these caddies.
• When directed (likely timer-based given that most of us have schedule trash delivery), the TCC lifts the front of the can slightly to make its wheels load bearing.
• The TCC travels down the bottom of the driveway using accelerometers and GPS backup (think geo-fencing to ensure the TCC doesn't go out into the roadway) to direct its path.  The user would have to take the can down and back on several training runs to ensure that the TCC knew where and how to go.
• The final spot for the can it determined with high accuracy by using a RFID pad attached to a post that is sitting just off the side of the driveway that the user wants the can to be placed.
• The TCC senses when it's been emptied and makes its way up the driveway about a minute after that's happened.
• The TCC sends you a quick note that it was successfully emptied and returned to it's storage location (also using an RFID pad).

There are a number of issues that could stand in the way of this ambitious product:

• Safety: you'd have an autonomous vehicle roaming your driveway.  It could run somebody over or hit a car.  On the plus side, it'd not need to move fast (maybe 6" per second).  It could use ultrasonic sensors (like cars) and current sensors on its motors and be sensitive to turn off.
• Stability: you really don't want the TCC tipping over on it's way to the road.  Good sensors, software and a control system should help keep things rolling in the right direction.
• Wear and tear: your garbage can is going to get flung up on a truck to be emptied.  The TCC has to be rugged enough to withstand repeated pounding.  Sensors and the control box may need to be located on either side to avoid this problem.
• Battery life: The system doesn't need to be particularly light, so perhaps you can pack a reasonably good size Li battery into this.  That said, trash cans are often stored outside where it can be quite cold.
• Inside storage of cans: Growing up, we used to store our trash cans in the garage.  For this system to work, you may need to include an automatic garage door opener interface.  But that would make it even cooler.  The complication could be tight maneuvering around cars.
• Non-paved driveways: maybe solved by using off-road tires.
• Snow: In a measurable amount of snow, the device would probably not work.  The app could perhaps alert the user when snow is forecasted at their address and force the user to affirmatively say that the path is snow-free.
• Ice: the TCC may just get stuck sometimes.  As long as it doesn't tip over, not the end of the world.  User is notified whenever this happens.

Two Steps Beyond

Here are some, mostly marginally useful thoughts on further improvements:

• Set the accelerometers to be on guard when the can is back at it's home location.  Chirp or alarm if animals are entering.
• Better yet, add a locking mechanism on the top.  Quick one-button unlocking and then automatic relocking, to avoid animal intrusion in the first place.  Much better than the bungie cord system that I'm using now.
• Based on the amount of force required to lift the front of the TCC, measure and track the garbage produced by the household.  Present data in an easily understood way.  Compare to their neighbors and the rest of the TCC users.  Make suggestions on how to reduce.  If you are like me, you can also measure recycling weight and make the user feel good about how much avoided landfill they've offset.

Day 3: Perfect Steak Gadget

I recently cooked a store-bought filet on my grill.  I had to pay close attention to the amount of time spent for various stages of the cooking process.  While it turned out quite well, why not have a device that does all of that for me?

One Step Beyond

The PerfectSteak® (not really) machine would work in the following manner:

1. With the grill cold, you'd clip the device on two grill bars.  To the left is your hot side and to the right is your cold side.
2. Turn your PerfectSteak on.
3. Heat up your grill to the desired temperature.  PerfectSteak will let you know when you've achieved that by sending you a message to the PerfectSteak app.  All interaction other than turning it on and off will be through the app.
4. Press "Load Steak" on your app.  The device raises the two long, fork-like rods for you to attach the steak.  The PerfectSteak knows when its loaded and begins the timer.
5. After two minutes the PerfectSteak raises the steak up, rotates it axially and then places it back on the grill surface.
6. After two more minutes the PerfectSteak flips the steak over to the cold side and alerts the user to shut down the hot side.
7. After two more minutes, the PerfectSteak flips the steak over axially on the cold side.
8. After two more minutes, the PerfectSteak beeps excitedly that it is done cooking the perfect steak!

See the below diagram that provides a clownishly simple view of what would be occurring:

I think that there are some obvious reasons why this will be hard:

• Electroics/motors in a 500ºF environment.  I'm sure that we have electronics and motors that could be used in this environment, but they are likely well out of the bounds of consumer applications.
• Alternatively, this could be solved by using two control rods that would go into the grill (from the front) and some clever mechanical engineering to enable all of the above-described acrobatics.  This certainly complicates the mounting of the device, but given that its firmly attached to the grill surface, it could hang from the front of the grill without too much problems.

Two Steps Beyond

A few more features that would be quite useful:

• Provide a measured plastic sheet to put your steak on prior to putting on the grill.  Have the user take a picture.
• Combine the above with the weight of the meat, and a much more sophisticated model of the piece of meat can be created.  
• Use that model, combined with the actual temperature inside the grill, rather than set cooking times to create the truly perfect steak.
• Use thermo-couples inside of the fork-like rod ends to measure internal temperature of the meat to further refine the model.
• Pressing a steak onto two fork-like rods when the rods are at high temperature would be no fun task.  The design can be modular, such that the fork is attached outside of the grill and then snapped into place when cooking begins.
• Though much, much more difficult, you could enable the device to control the flow of propane to the grill.  Probably one step too far.

[Update 2015-01-06]

I guess the other option is to put the smarts into the grill itself, like the Lynx SmartGrill.

Day 2: Electronic Food Peeler

This appeals only to the gadget lover in me and, alas, is not likely to be very practical.  It was, however, born out of a not too satisfying experience with the "traditional" tool for the job.  And no, I don't mean a hand-held peeler, but a hand-cranked peeler/corer/slicer.  My son and I used ours for the first time in pursuit of some Thanksgiving mashed potatoes.  I dutifully weighed out 3 pounds of potatoes as called for in the recipe.  I then used the device as pictured below.  Given the geometry of the potatoes, I first cut them in half.

It worked, but took a lot of peel off.  And I had to finish off the ends in each case.  When I was done, I looked at the amount of peel that I had lopped off and decided that I should reweigh.  It turned out that there was only 2 pounds left!  A full third of my potatoes had been lost to the peeling process.  There has to be a better way. There is, and it would be our second day's gadget.

One Step Beyond

My conception would be to have a single axis peeler set up in much the same way that the above is. The goal would be a peeler that would work both well with apples and potatoes (referred to as pommes for the rest of this discussion).  As a result, my device would connect to the pommes on both ends of the axis.  If it connects to the end with the corer/slicer module, the user would have to feed the spikes through the hole, but I think the added stability would be greatly worth it.  The process would be the following:

1. Decide up front if coring and slicing will be part of the activity.  If so, mount the plate to do these things.
2. Mount the pomme by connecting both ends.  
3. Close the box around the pomme for safety.
4. Select apple or potato.  
5. Press "Peel Now!"
6. The device starts out by spinning the pommes and scanning them.  The scanner would move axially down the pomme as it collected sufficiently detailed topological information to understand the bumps.
7. As the scanner is moving down the pomme, the knife follows in its wake.  The knife moves in an out according to the topological map of the pomme to ensure that it's putting just enough pressure (still spring mounted) to take off the skin, without putting undo pressure resulting in too much pomme lost.
8. When the device is done, it beeps or says, "You're pomme is ready!" (depending on which one you chose).
9. Open box and remove the pomme.

Two Steps Beyond

Here are some additional improvements that could be made:

• Multiple peeling attachments for different fruit.  Potatoes and apples likely would require a different peel.  Cucumbers, too.
• Along with multiple peeling attachements, you could enable axial, instead of just circumferential, peeling.  Cucumbers are typically peeled exclusively like this.  Would likely require a substantial upgrade to the motor output and control of the peeler.
• Enable a spinning peeler for rinding of oranges.  Perhaps skinning of tomatoes.  Not sure what else.

Day 1: A Mini UPS

So I realize that some of you may think that I'm cheating on this one, but this is an idea that I had on my own.  First let me describe the problem that led to me thinking about the solution.

I use Vonage, which requires the use of an ethernet to telephone line interface.  I have an old Motorola Voice Terminal box (VT1005V) that I've had since I started with Vonage (around 2002).  It all works well in normal circumstances, but when I lose power in my house, it causes problems.  I'm sure that this isn't supposed to happen, but the VT1005V interferes with one of the FiOS TV box's reacquiring it's IP address via the FiOS router.  As a result, every time the power trips, even for a brief moment, I have to reset the router with the VT1005V unplugged, and let everything get set and then plug the VT1005V back in.

It's a hassle that could be solved by ensuring that the VT1005V didn't turn off.  The rest of my network gear (the FiOS router and the ethernet switch that the VT1005V is plugged into) are already on a UPS.  Unfortunately, the VT1005V is located in my garage all by itself so I can connect it to my house's telephone wiring.  I could just buy a normal small-ish UPS for the garage, but the least expensive one that I can find (having searched Google Shopping, MicroCenter and Amazon) is ~$40.  It also feels reasonably wrong that I'm plugging in a DC device into an AC output of a DC device (the UPS).

You may ask the reasonable question, "Why don't you just set up your VT1005V with a static IP address so that it doesn't interfere with the assignment of the other TV box?"  The answer is a bad one: the VT1005V doesn't respond to web requests, like it manual suggests that it would.  It doesn't even respond to ping requests.  So there is no setting this up with a custom configuration.

That leaves me with the option of making sure that the VT1005V never turns off.  $40 and I'm done.  But this device has very minimal power requirements and is DC, so why can't I buy a device better suited to that need.  I can't find any devices that meet my needs - at least that are readily available in retail.  This is where the internet comes in.

So, I knew what I wanted and kept looking.  Eventually, I did find a device that appears to get it right.  This would be perfect and if the Alibaba price of $16/unit was the retail price, I would be sold.  However, I'm assuming that the actual retail price would have to be roughly a 2x multiple of this.  At $30/unit, it feels less compelling, but still of interest.

There are a range of options, as it turns out.  The simplest would get the job done.  It's basically a battery, but a battery fit for it's intended purpose.  A more complex option (shown above), could get the job done in a cabinet where you have a number of DC-driven devices next to each other.  Even USB powered devices (which I think that we'll see more of).

So, it appears that somebody figured out there is a need.  But I can't get access to the gadget that is the solution.  Unless I want to become an importer.  Which I don't.  Unless I have six other really good ideas.

One Step Beyond

The only reason that I have interest in this product is that product designers have missed the boat.  What boat am I talking about?  It turns out that 75% of all electricity outages (at least reported to the APPA for 2013) last about 72 minutes or less.  See the below chart and look under the SAIDI (System Average Interruption Duration Index) column.

The second chart just suggests that these statistics don't vary too much over time.  So if manufacturers put batteries into their products that could power the product for 75 minutes, customers could avoid 75% of problems with running their devices in the first place without relying on a UPS.  For high power usage devices, this probably doesn't make sense.  My (old) 65" TV can draw almost up to 1 kW.  I have no expectation that Sharp would build in a battery.  That said, when its a clock, Voice Terminal, router, switch, Roku, or the like, I think that this is quite reasonable.  What would this look like for product designers to build this into their products?

The most obvious problems with building batteries into devices are the following:

• Additional cost
• Increased weight
• Battery could fail before unit is done
• Increased energy usage

That said, each of them could potentially be offset:

• Install a standardized slot with a name-brand battery (Energizer).  Have Energizer subsidize the slot on the expectation of replacements down the road.
• Advertise the benefits to consumers.  We all know that our power goes out a bit and especially no days with most of our computers being handhelds or laptops (that continue to have power during an outage), losing access to the internet is disruptive and inconvenient.  I'd pay extra.
• Addressed in the first bullet point.
• For energy usage, the manufacturers could compare their units usage to that of a combined UPS and their non-backed up device.  Their devices would probably compare favorably.

Seven Gadgets for Seven Days

My goal here will be to come up with 7 truly novel and useful items that would enhance our lives / technology experience.  I'm not sure that I can do this - I only have one in my mind right now, but it'll make me think hard about it.  And I will try not to cheat by mentioning gadget ideas that I have previously posted.  Which is partially the point.

Also, I'm totally open to hearing your ideas.   Please share and make my life easier!

Gadget Freak?

I was recently accused of being a gadget freak when talking about the new Amazon Echo.  I was talking to a friend about the new Amazon Echo and that is when he made the comment.  The accusation actually somewhat surprised me.  Perhaps it shouldn't have, I do write this blog.  But it did.

Perhaps I am a gadget freak.  But really I'm not after gadgets for the pure joy of gadgets, but rather the things that gadgets can enable.  I've recently replaced my flakey Pioneer VSX-1122 receiver with a Yamaha RX-A1040.  The thoughts below reflect my recent setup and comparison of the two units.

Here are some (new & recycled) high-ish level thoughts on how our lives could be better with gadgets:

• Reduced Friction: Make it easier for me to do things or access information.
• Make it easy for me to do the things that I want to do.  Echo is cool because you just don't have to do anything beyond speaking.  Until we can do a direct brain interface, this is going to be the easiest and most convenient way for me to express myself to a computer.
• Allow me to multitask.  Asking questions while I'm cooking (I'd probably put the Echo in my kitchen).  Setting timers while I'm throwing spaghetti into boiling water.  All of this would make my life a little bit better.
• I also that computer interface elements matter quite a bit here, too.  I am a huge fan of Atlassian's Confluence wiki product.  When I'm on a page and want to edit it, all I do is hit 'e' on my keyboard and boom - I'm editing.  Blogger has a long ways to go before its as good.  In fact, Blogger is so far behind that I'm worried that Google will give up on it at some point in the not too distant future.
• Lower Setup Hurdles: Make it easy for me to extend the equipment and environment in my home.
• Electronics companies do somethings poorly, but others are done quite well.  I don't have to set up HDMI.  I plug it in and it works.
• The device should stay aware of what is connected to it.  If it's configured in such a way as that output wouldn't or shouldn't be working, tell the user.  Can it be that hard?  Specifically, I'm thinking about my new Yamaha receiver that has a "Zone 2 - Zone Out" set of RCA jacks, but no description of when those are active.  See below in "Better Documentation" for more complaints here.
• I think that there should be a setup video, a walk through of all of the functionality and an ability to skip ahead to key sections.  Post this on YouTube or a specialized site that focuses on letting people to skip to specific portions of the video.
• Improved Error Handling:  When something doesn't work, help me fix it.
• When something doesn't work, don't tell me "Memory Error UE22".  Seriously (Pioneer), that is ridiculous.  Unhelpful, especially when Googling it comes up with nothing.
• My new Yamaha receiver cut out a couple of times when I was in the process of connecting speaker wires.  I would turn it off and then test a new group of speakers.  Eventually, it said to "Check Speaker Wires".  OK, that makes some sense.  But why stop there?  Why not tell me exactly which speaker is giving you the problem?  Shouldn't there be a quick routine where each speaker is tested individually and then a better suited message is displayed (i.e., Check Center Speak wire)?  I did check all of my wires, made some changes, but then got the message a couple of more times.  Then, the messages stopped and the stereo is no longer complaining.  I guess it's all fine?
• I'm the least optimistic about seeing improvements in this area, given that I think that companies (incorrectly) discount the value to the consumer of this part of the process.  I think that many people are willing to do some trouble-shooting before they get tech support on the line or before they give up and return their items to the store from which they purchased it.  I think that companies are incorrectly determining that it's just not worth it.
• More Integration and Imagination: let's think of all of the potential use-cases, not just the easy ones.
• If I'm playing music on my Roku using Amazon streaming on my Prime account, the Echo should be able to ask if I want it to replicate that sound stream.  Given that it can listen to it's environment, it should also be able to synch up on the timing.  This feature may exist, but if it does, I'm unaware from their documentation so far.
• Better Documentation: Document your product exhaustively, but in a way your customers are likely to understand.
• Provide good reference material.  Tell me exactly how it works.  I mean exactly.  When do various outputs function and when do they not.   What are the dependencies between one action versus another?  Yes, the documentation probably gets a bit more complicated, but mine was delivered by CD-ROM (or actually me downloading from their website), so it shouldn't really be much of an additional cost, no?
• Back to the "Zone 2 - Zone Out" set of RCA jacks.  Apparently they are not active all of the time? Are they at line level or at speaker level?  I don't know.  Again, the documentation is not sufficient.  It does say on page 153 that Zone Out is "1 V/1.2kΩ" but I don't know what that really means.  I think its more Line Level than not, but why is it at 1 V instead of 200 mV, like the AV out?  Why?  What is up with this? Wikipedia doesn't really help.  Maybe some of you all out there know?

Dash!

I can still remember carpooling in the mid-90's and hearing ads for the world's largest bookstore on the radio.  Amazon has come a long way since then, and my life is better for it.  I am a big fan of Prime and "Subscribe and Save," but I'm looking forward to more.

If you are not aware, Amazon has introduced online grocery services, Prime Fresh.  Sadly, it's available "only in the Southern California and Northern California, CA Metro areas".  Those of us on the east coast are out of luck, at least for now.

Now, they go one step further and introduce the Dash.  This would have a special place in my kitchen if Amazon can ever make northern Virginia work for their grocery services.  I'm looking forward to additional retail innovations that Amazon brings forth (and am also lamenting the fact that competitors to Amazon are not spurring on the innovation).

When Will Wearables Explode?

Not thinking in the literal sense, but in something more than the industry hype sense.  I hope that the hype has peaked and we are moving into the period of hard work where people make products attractive and usable for the masses, not just the early adopters.

Here are some ill-informed views on when I think that wearables will really take off:

• When "energy harvesting" is built-in from the start.  While I am generally not too annoyed that I have to charge my fitbit once per week, I'd rather I didn't have to.  It seems somewhat ironic, as well, that a device that is capturing my motion data, is not using that motion to its benefit.  How cool would it be if I never had to charge my fitbit (as long as I used it)?
• Data transmission is standardized.  Good example: I have a fitbit and a Garmin ForeRunner 450.  Both require proprietary USB adapters to connect to my computer.  Hopefully, devices will coalesce around using low power BlueTooth or some single suitable technology.  Better than this, it'd be great if the devices didn't use near-field technology at all, but instead connected to Wifi and take the computer out of the equation.
• More complete monitoring.  Steps are a good first step.  But not nearly enough for a compelling fitness / wellness view.  
• How about:
• 3D movement, interpreted, so that you don't have to log what activity you were doing.  Premium systems could include multiple sensors for a better read (wrist, hip & ankle).
• Heart rate (and better yet actual ECG signal)
• Blood oxygen levels
• Respiratory rate
• Perspiration levels
• Blood pressure
• GPS location, even if only through your phone
• Some of this should be real-time, but where that gets hard, at least make near real time (like Azoi could be used right after getting off the treadmill).
• Some better understanding of how people want to change themselves (or remain the same).  
• For instance, is it important to you to:
• Train for a particular event
• Just get "better"
• Remain at your current high fitness level
• Provide real feedback tailored to such.  I'm afraid that this will remain in the "paid extra" category, but I don't think that it will take off until a subscription is not required.  I'd be much more willing to buy a premium version of the product up front that has this built into the cost rather than a subscription and think that many others share my aversion.  It boggles my mind that this isn't being done already with fitbit.
• Capture "uncapturable" information and integrate it into your product.  
• AskMeEvery is a great example of how this could be done:
• Wearable user works out
• Wearable system asks user how fatigued they are after the workout (via email, if necessary)
• Wearable system determines that its pretty much the same workout as they had done three days ago
• Wearable system alerts user that they are making progress: their reported fatigue is only 8 out of 10 instead of the 10 out of 10 they reported three days ago
• To be fair, fitbit and others are doing this with food.  But it comes in the "paid extra" category and still isn't easy enough to do reliably.
• Generally decrease the uncapturable information in the system.  A few thoughts:
• Build a kitchen scale with wifi that can be used in conjunction with a phone app.  Have people weigh their food.  (Seems like this could already exist and I'm just unawares).  It has to be much more accurate that taking a picture or just estimating.  And easier.  I had 18oz of lasagna.  Done.
• [Other ideas to be added as they (hopefully) come to me.]

Automation of a Garage Door

I was inspired by this video that I saw on YouTube a while back to both automate my garage door opener and to also install a position sensor. I finally got off my butt today to get the project done. All of the purchases had been previously made, and I was pretty sure that I had the appropriate tools.

Equipment List:

• Already installed garage door opener
• Radio Shack Relay (125VAC/10A DPDT Plug-In Relay)
• Radio Shack Quick Crimp-On Disconnects (found here)
• GE 45604 Z-Wave Technology Outdoor Module for Lighting Control (at Amazon)
• Two prong extension chord (to be sacrificed).

Process:

1. Wire up the relay to the extension cord providing power to the relay.  Specifically, cutting off the extension cord and then using the end with the prongs.  I've never wired up a relay - so this was a first to me.  I used simple wire strippers and cut the wires such that they would fit into the quick disconnects.  I crimped them using my wire strippers.  
2. Wire up the relay to a blank section of the extension cord (just using some of the wire).  Added crimps on the end to be connected to the relay and left the end to be wired to the door opener stripped but bare wire.
3. Here's what it should look like when all done:
   
4. Add the Z-wave Outdoor Module to my MiCasa Verde.  I did this by plugging it in near the Vera, turning it on and having it add it.  I referred to it as Garage Door Opener.
5. Take everything to the garage and plug it all in.  This involves wiring the stripped end of the extension cord to the same wiring terminal as the existing switch and remote control. This is what it looked like for me when it was all done. Note that the Z-wave switch and the relay were just sitting on top of the garage door opener (hopefully things don't move around enough to warrant zip ties).
   
6. Add a scene to MiCasa Verde called "Garage Door" to turn on the switch and then turn it off in 5 seconds (the shortest amount of time possible).

Note: The wiring of the relay should be pretty straightforward.  The one I had, there was a simple wiring diagram on the back of it showing the state of the relay when it was open (off).

[Update 2013-12-16]
To add a little bit of clarity to exactly what I am doing with the relay here are some additional pictures and some explanation:

My relay was set up like this; the diagram depicts the configuration of the pins when the power is off.  When power is switched on, the link between 2 and 6 or 1 and 5 flips to 4 and 6 or 3 and 5.  This is essential to trigger the garage door, which needs a circuit to close for a brief moment (that is what your normal garage door switch is doing).

A little bit hard to tell here, but the power outlet from the Z-wave controller (the two white wires with the blue warning label around it) are plugged into the 7 and 8 poles.  The garage door opener is connected to poles 4 & 6 (normally open to one another, but when the relay is active, closed).

Another view from the business side of the relay; here you can see the numbers clearly on the left side of the relay (not used).

[End Update]

After it is installed, you may want to ensure that your previous means of raising and lowering the garage door still work (remotes, hard-wired All set.  Assuming the relay is wired correctly, when the scene is run you are good to go.

Bonus Round

I also and almost primarily wanted to know whether the garage door was up or down.  To do that, I needed an window or door sensor.  I chose an EverSpring Z-Wave Door / Window Sensor.  Prior to going to the garage, I added the sensor to the MiCasa Verde.

It turned out to be pretty easy to physically install, the key was finding a spot where I could keep the gap between the sensor to a minimum (less than 40mm) that was added to the door and the portion screwed in to the garage door frame. For me, this required adding a door shim behind the sensor to make sure it was close enough to the magnet in the traveling sensor. After final installation, it looks like the following:

After a few test runs making sure that there was no interference and that the MiCasa Verde was reading the position properly, I declared victory. Victory may be premature - my guess is that this setup may have issues in the cold - there is an air gap at the top of the garage door that might hamper the batteries in the sensor. We'll have to wait and see if that is the case, though. A 4.5V DC power supply could be brought to bear if need be.

Finally, I see the following in the room "Garage Door":

LED Lighting: In the (LED) Mood

Concept
Shift the lighting in your room/house to match your mood.

Background
LED lighting, though still prohibitively expensive for most of us, will become an increasingly viable alternative to incandescent and even compact fluorescents. Advantages will include both longer life and higher efficiency that we currently have today with incandescent bulbs. But LEDs will also allow a greater control over the mood of the room. Here, I propose a simple control system for in-room lighting that is compatible with your existing home wiring.

Details
The LED Concept Lighting (LCL) consists of two modules: the switch and the "bulb". The switch will be backwards compatible with existing wall switches and really only require two wires in: hot and ground. The bulb will screw into the standard set of sockets used today for lighting such as the S100 "Edison" socket or its European equivalent of the E27. See here and here for some ideas of the types of bulbs that are currently available. Current bulbs are available at a "fixed" color or frequency; they cannot be adjusted after they've been manufactured. Some have flirted with these ideas, such as this project, though I'm not sure they have expressed all of the thoughts I'm about to here (forgive me if you've done so, and I just missed it).

What will be unique about this system is the user's ability to change the light characteristics with a simple wall switch. This is far more that just a "dimmer switch", but a "mood switch". The switch will probably look much like the dimmer switches that you'll find that fit into a standard switch plate (i.e., the switch itself is narrowed a bit and there is an up/down slider on the side that governs the intensity of the light). The coolness is added with two extra controls: the three-bar slider (TBS) and the Temperature Dial (TD). The controls don't necessarily coexist well with each other, so there would need to be a small red LED above the control that is currently setting the light output. The switch would directly control all of the lights on the given circuit. High frequency data bursts could be put out on the circuit to set the parameters, similar, but much less complex than HomePlug although using it as a standard might keep the costs down.

The TBS is what it sounds like, basically a way for the user to directly control the Red, Green and Blue components of the light output. If you want the room to be "hot" and all red, just slide down the green and blue sliders and crank up the red. The possibilities are (almost) endless - to the degree of variation that each color element will allow. I'm guessing that 256 should be more than sufficient for customized coloration.

The TD is really an alternate way of adjusting the light that will be more intuitive for some people. This will, as the name suggests, set the light temperature and it will have the Kelvin markings around the edge of the dial. A range of 3000 to 5500 should probably be sufficient for most people.

The addition of the TBS and TD will require a unique faceplate to be used, but I think that as long as it follows standard conventions for everything else, it will not be a significant problem for backward compatibility.

One Step Beyond . . .
So all of that is cool, really cool actually. But it could be even cooler. How? By going One Step Beyond for this Gadget to the point where you add customizable programming for each lightbulb. Too hard - I don't think so. Here's how you do it:

The Bulb:
The bulk would need to be capable of "listening" to an outside control source and adjust the output of the three LEDs accordingly. The listening could take place over the power input (similar to the HomePlug idea floated above). The key for this to work, though is that each light has to listen and filter out instructions for other bulbs and only listen to its own instructions. Thus each light will need to effectively have its own ID or MAC address. For our purposes, instead of "Media Access Control", we need Lighting Access Control, so for fun we'll describe the address/ID as an LAC address.

The Controller:
Generally, I think that to have anything of even moderate complication, you are going to need to use a computer-based programming platform. So everything that follows, will make that assumption. The controller process consists of the following four functions: mapping the room, writing the lighting program, transferring to a dedicated controller and finally, running the program.

Mapping the room: As a first step, you'd want to map out each light's location in the room and probably associate a LAC address with each point on the map. Probably not too hard? I don't think so, but there could be a complication if the orientation of the LED lightbulb made a difference in the final program. There, the mapping may require the user to (a) take note of the LAC (b) screw the LED lightbulb and take note of the orientation with respect to the room. Orientation could be controlled by the outer ring of LEDs lighting as different colors and the user picking the best match for one of the walls. This could even work on chandeliers and such. If the system took off, you could even allow people (or manufacturers) to share models of common light fixtures, so they wouldn't have to remap/design lights themselves.

Lighting Program: The computer platform would give you, as the "light architect", total freedom to set the mood of your room. Your mood could be static, animated or responsive to its environment. Static moods don't necessarily mean boring: you could differentially color a room and come up with cool patterns that play well to the furniture and other surroundings there. An animated room could be simple or complex. The complexity could be stepped up another level through the use of "Short Throw Wide-Angle Opaque Glass" as I will describe later below. A rolling or pulsating pattern might look pretty cool. As would many "screensaver"-like options.

Transferring to Controller: After the lights have been mapped, the program written, its time to transfer it to the device that will control the actual bulbs. The technology used to send the control signals will dictate some of the aspects of the controller. If a wireless standard like ZigBee is used, the controller could be anything from a handheld remote to your laptop with a ZigBee USB fob sitting on the side of it. If HomePlug is used instead, the controller would have to be connected in some fashion to the same circuit as the LED lights that you were looking to control.

Running the Program: Running the program could be a matter pressing play on your laptop (perhaps the animation is tied into the iTunes visualizer on the music that you are stream through your house for your party). Alternately, it could be pressing button 1 on your handheld remote when you walk in the door and the room begins pulsating in the very cool way that you've spent hours programming.

"Short Throw Wide-Angle Opaque Glass"
OK, so the LED bulbs cost about $150 each. That's a lot of money! I have a room in my basement with 15 recessed lights. Even if I'm a bit crazy and I spend $2,250 to put LED bulbs in each of those lights, I am probably not going to add another couple hundred lights to make a contiguous "canvas" for me to develop some really, really cool lighting program.

Instead, what I propose to do is to mount a 2' x 2' piece of opaque glass below each recessed light that will spread the light from the LED out about 10x from the "wide angle" that bulb would produce. The opaque glass would hang about 4 inches from the ceiling and would be supported by four corner fixed pegs or screws going into the drywall of the ceiling. Between the opaque glass panel and the LED bulb, there would be an innovative lens that spreads the light evenly out to the full area of the glass. I'm not quite done with ensuring that the physics work here, but I'm sure that somebody smarter than me could tackle this in a matter of no time.

The effect of adding the "Short Throw Wide-Angle Opaque Glass" is that you'd have an almost contiguous surface that you could do some really cool things with, such as display pictures and more complex graphics. Here, the orientation of the bulbs really do matter and you'd begin to talk pretty quickly about how many "pixels" each bulb could represent or display. Initial lights ought to be capable of 128 pixels and densities could be increased in the bulbs without the glass needing upgrading (as long as it was in increments of 4x).

Who Should Do This?
GE, Philips come to mind immediately. They certainly own the lighting market in the U.S.

In fact Philips appears to have the beginnings of a system in place, but unfortunately looks to be only in the press release stage. Products available today look simplistic, such as the LED Color Changing Party & Deco Bulb. Other, similarly simplistic LED light items can be found here.

Smaller companies, such as ChannelBrite might have just the right combination of innovation and business skill to make this happen, at least at a small scale.

Will it Happen?
Probably, but will it take a while. Unfortunately, politicians are fixated on compact fluorescents as being the "mandated" wave of the future. Instead of looking for more efficient outcomes, the government has decided instead it will pick technology winners. This is not a case where the government should be mandating method, only outcome (efficiency). OK, I'm off my soapbox now.

Hard Drive Graveyard

The HardDrive Graveyard (HDG)

I’m one of those people that just won’t throw away a hard drive. Not so much because I need the extra 8 GB that my four year old hard drive will give me, but because I just don’t want any of my private data getting out there. It may also be driven by some laziness in organizing all of my old data and the nagging fear that I haven’t gotten everything that I need from the old hard drive. So what to do?

General Concept
Ideally, there would be a ATX sized case with 12 flexible slots for desktop and laptop-sized hard drives. The slots would be flexible on both size and type (supporting SATA all the way back to the really old-school hard drives (think IDE).

The flexibility could be obtained by having a standardized connection at the back of the slot of the HDG. Then, through different trays (think MacPro) and adapters that would snap on the back of the hard drive, the device could handle any previous format. The specific trays and adapters could be sold with the HDG or after the fact for a minimum ($10) amount of money. Speed would not be a key factor of this device – this is not designed to provide primary, shared storage for a home network, but rather to only provide cheat and convenient access to old data.

The HDG would have a FireWire 800, USB 2.0 and Ethernet connection on the back. From there, it should have the same network accessibility as the best home-targeted storage area network boxes that are on the market (think Infrant and others). RAID features probably don’t need to be a big factor, but couldn’t hurt. I think a small number of added features here would help. One would be to allow the user to set a hard drive as active or old. All of the old hard drives would be logically grouped together by the server software and the first level of folders would be the separate hard drives with titles of their volume names. In addition, it would be nice to have an “OS Scrub” feature, that would remove all of the files that are on your hard drive that were there simply to allow you to run your computers (i.e., Windows or OSX system files). You shouldn’t need these files anymore, because you don’t even have the computer anymore. [Note: it would be really cool to rig up a virtualization program to make that last statement untrue. Parallels or Virtual Desktop could add some great features if they could figure out how to recognize a “computer” and just make that hard drive act as the old computer.] The space freed by the removal of system files could be used as additional storage in the context of the old stuff that you were doing, or as part of the next feature. The next additional feature (though not a critical one) is “Large Slow Storage” or LSS. If I am describing something that is already well-described, please forgive me, but it is a novel concept to me. LSS generally would be used for files that would not be accessed with any frequency, and when they were accessed, would not need lightning fast file delivery. Archiving video would be a good example of where this could be useful.

But for this concept to work well, the HDG will have to be a champ with power savings features: to both minimize customer operational costs as well as manage heat. The device should be able to individually turn off hard drives when they are not in use based on customer-set preferences. This would minimize time that the old hard drives are spinning and allow the user to get the quality of service that they need.

Total price for the HDG could not be more than $400 and the lower it can go, the better.

Why won’t this probably work?
• Storage is getting large too quickly. You can almost just copy your old hard drive lock, stock and barrel, onto the new hard drive and still have plenty of room.
• Storage prices continue to fall. Perhaps just a corollary to the first reason, but the fact that you can do the above, doesn’t mean that you necessarily will. The fact that you can do it ridiculously cheaply (at least compared to the last time you saw storage prices), you may very well do it without thinking.
• Better migration software has emerged (either within the OS or in addition to it), to allow users to move all of their files onto the new computer. My view is that OSX does a pretty good job on this, but I’m wary of trusting something like this without double-checking. That’s where your time can really be sucked up – others probably disagree.

Who should do it?
Obvious candidates are DLink, Linksys or Buffalo. Others, closer to start up, like Infrant, could really make a go of it here. Its probably not a huge market, but one that I would assume that they could pursue. Pursuit could also bring some modular benefits for them. The connectors/sleds/slots that are generic for this project, could be adapted and developed only once for the rest of their product line.

[Update 2014-11-28]
There are a great many devices known as Hard Drive Docks available that do something similar to what I described here.  I must have been a thought leader?  No, I'm just joking.