Are your appliances tweeting you yet?

May 3rd, 2012

Appliance News Fridges & Freezers Heating & Cooling Laundry

A new gadget called Twine can get appliances to text, tweet and e-mail you.

For those with un-smart appliances, you know, the ordinary kind of oven that doesn’t count the calories of the the food it’s cooking, or the fridge which won’t tell you when the milk is off, then Twine will bridge the gap from dumb to smart.

Say it has been left on top of the washing machine. When the washing cycle is finished, Twine will sense the stillness and if it has been programmed to, it can Tweet the owner to let them know it’s time to hang the clothes out to dry.

How does Twine do this?

It is a small, wireless device that uses a cloud based service to communicate information. The 2.5-inch contraption has internal and external sensors including temperature, vibration and moisture sensors that will send messages when the environment changes.

This is done via a web app that allows “human-friendly rules” to be set up.

It could be used, for example, to let holidaying homeowners know if the fridge and freezer should stop running, if the house has flooded or is on fire!

Twine also has a magnetic switch that is triggered when a magnet is moved around it. So if you put a magnet on a door or window, you’ll know if someone is coming in our out of the house. What a way to nab a sneaky teenager!

Keri Algar

Having once had to sit on the washing machine to stop it from bouncing into oblivion, Keri is today delighted with the new (smoother running) technologies that make housework easier every day. A self-confessed lazy-bones, Keri seeks out quirky inventions that ease the human workload, such as the robotic vacuum cleaner (wow). And as soon as someone figures out a Jetsons-like self-cleaning house, she will happily lay her pen to rest and retire from appliance journalism. Until then, her pick is a fridge that will tell her smartphone when it's time to pick up more beer on the way home. Magic.