Tom Van den Bon
There are lots of proper IoT projects out there, and Life Gadgets is also one of those IoT ideas, but with a twist. There has been numerous times where I needed a temporary IoT fix, a setup that would only be temporary but important none the less. For example, my fridge has been acting up and I wanted to monitor the temperature in there over a period of time. Easy to do with one of the usual arduino variants, a temperature sensor and some rf solution like an xbee. The sad fact is that I just wasn't in the mood to set that up and all the hassles that are involved. It seems simple but once you start you spend a couple of days on it. Find all the components in my junkbox, download the development tools because mine are outdated for that specific library that will be used for that specific rf module, etc. Fun for some I'm sure, but with a full-time job and a 2-year old in the house it seems like time wasted. Let's face it, if I have a few days to spare on an electronics project then I'd rather build something really cool and fun and not just an iteration of whats already out there. So what I actually need is a system that will allow me to setup these quick temporary IoT setups with minimal hassle.
This is where my concept of Life Gadgets come in. Simple modules that can be programmed with 'scratch' like blocks from my smartphone to setup my fridge monitor temperature scenario in a few minutes ...