the washcounter 3000

Black T-shirts go grey. They just do. Unless you never wear / wash them. Use ‘color’ detergents, use ‘colorstay’ dryer sheets, use voodoo and magik. Nothing stops the inevitable ageing of your black shirt into a grey shirt.The age old question though, is which t-shirt lasts longest? I have a feeling that the Meh shirt from thinkgeek stayed black-black for WAY longer than my Roots tee (the one with the cool Atari joystick). But did it, or did I just wear the roots tee more often. How many wash cycles did each pass through?

Introducing the washcounter 3000.

The washcounter is a tiny rfid embedded in the label, which has a heat sensor to tell it when it goes through the machine. It can be interrogated by the washcounter drawerwatcher - which sits in your shirt drawer / closet / wardrobe / rail. This will simply give a list of your shirts, with a simple count of how many times each has been washed. You could even post this to the washcounter live website. You would have an overall score for how often you’d worn each shirt. Some would want a low score, the dark greens would want a high score.

The trivia side alone is worth my money. But the satisfaction of knowing that Meh lasted 10 more washes than Roots must approach that of making a lumpless tasty bechamel, or nailing a perfect level on Q*bert. American apparel could boast exact figures for how black their shirts stay.

Clothing manufacturers could use them to encourage restocking - for example as my Meh shirt appraches 30 washes the drawerwatcher could start to say ‘Meh is getting grey dude, buy something fresh’. Direct access to my brain at the moment that I’m looking for something to wear. A marketers dream!

As I write, washcounter.net is available to anyone who feels the urge to take this on.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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November 11, 2007 | Filed Under datatoy, measurement, surveillance

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global webcam weather monitor

Another overcast morning. Joy. I’ve had an idea for a distributed weather forecasting / tracking project though. Every cloud…

Basically everyone who has a webcam leaves it on when not being used, and points it out of their window. A small app on their PC then sends a stream of images to a web service which sets the view onto a map.

If the cam is pointing at the sky, or at something outdoors at least, changes in colour, brightness, etc… will indicate local weather conditions.

When a cloud passes over a district, the central server can see the webcams darken in succession. It can then drive a real time view to the website for people in the area. I could see a dark mass approaching from the west, and predict rain arriving shortly.

If it looks like it got dark a mile away, I can look at the nearest webcam to see for myself in more detail. That way I can see if it is cloud, or just a cat sitting on the windowsill blocking the light. If it’s a cloud, I should be able to see if it’s raining, or just overcast.

This is much better than pictures of clouds with raindrops coming out of them and some guy yabbering on about it being ‘mainly clear with some showers’.

The weather map would look like one of those photographs made up of thousands of other photographs. Or it could simply take an aggregate color / brightness value from webcams within the area.

Scale
If the central server is replaced by a swarm of nodes then even better as it could be totally open and distributed. Most people will only be interested in local weather, as this is really a micro weather forecasting system, allowing me to see actual weather near me now. If I’m about to go out for a run, or to cycle to work, this is amazingly useful. The data then doesn’t have to travel too far, other than reporting out broad aggregate values – for plotting on the national maps.

It could also plot the average colour of the webcams across the country – it would be beautiful when it snows. Animations would look amazing. Flash mashups with google maps and time animations as big storms moved over an area could look amazing. Screensavers could be great too – based on live feed info.

You would also be able to see night time approaching as cams get darker – again, animating this could be cool.

A lot of towns and cities have webcams running 24/7 already which could be used to trial this. Even if they point at something complex, so long as it is outdoors it would work, it is the change we are looking for, darkening or lightening for example. We don’t need to actually see the sun or the cloud for this to work. Assuming the project consumes the webcam feed lightly, I can’t see any objection people could have to allowing it to harvest already published images.

It could be operationally similar to open street map, a great project which produces maps in this people generated manner. Some geotagging group should be able to accomodate kicking off something like this, and have a sound tech foundation for it already from other projects.

Thanks for the CC webcam pics to http://flickr.com/photos/konnecke/268895705/ and http://flickr.com/photos/snype451/42070498/

The sketch:

Popularity: 14% [?]

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September 2, 2007 | Filed Under measurement, surveillance

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dogometer

Fat dogs are everywhere. This is a pedometer that you hang on your dogs collar. It measures levels of doggy activity, and wi-fi reports to your PC how active your dog has been. Software knows the breed, age, weight etc… and gives advice on how long a walk to take pooch for this evening.

The function should be almost passive for the owner, they shouldn’t have to go looking for this information, it needs to land in their email, on their tv, or on the phone / sms. It needs to actively pursue the owner to take the dog out for a walk. People who already walk the dog enough don’t need this – unless they just like numbers (like I do).

There are a few products out there giving the basic pedometer distance and calorie counts for pets (notably petometer.com) but none that I can find that take things further.

Optional extra – it could send electric shocks through the dogs collar to make it dance, thereby burning calories!

Optional extra 2 – a locked food bowl which only opens when bowser has done his 20 minutes of exercise for the day.

Optional extra 3 – a pet operated add on ‘leash hook’. This is a wifi enabled hook you place on your wall, it holds the dogs walking leash. When the dog is under exercised the hook drops the leash, prompting the dog to pick up leash, run to owner, and request walkies. Pure fred bassett.

PC Interface options – it could have an icon on your desktop of a fat ugly crying dog when your dog is being too lazy, or a fit excited happy dancing dog if it was doing well. Actually, this could drive your screen saver – so that as you return to your pc you see your sad, lazy dog on the screen and think ‘I’ll take shep for a walk before I finish that report’. For more organised types it would use direct advice – like “dogometer recommends a 20-30 minute walk today”.

The key here is to use cheap wifi to hook into peoples wireless and send messages to a centralised account which monitors the dogs activity. Simple messages are then conveyed back to help promote dog health - taking away the need for the owner to think too much. People don’t seem to like thinking too much. The ongoing messages could even be sponsored, allowing the initial purchase to be the only direct expenditure.

Thanks for the pic of the dog to http://flickr.com/photos/charlesfred/1264976479/

[no sketch pic for this inventoid - until I find that notebook again]

Popularity: 11% [?]

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September 1, 2007 | Filed Under surveillance, health

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coffee intake automonitor

Sometimes I drink too much coffee. Not as often as I used to, but it still happens. I always kick off my day with a cup. Cafetiere (french press) coffee, freshly made. If I start my day too early, and say ‘yeah why not’ a couple of extra times during the morning I can easily hit 5 or 6 cups by noon. Bad news.

I need help to cut down. The basic idea is as follows:

Attach an RFID to your Cafetiere. Install a proximity reader in the kitchen. Every time the cafetiere comes into range PING! that’s another cup of coffee. The proximity reader sends a message to the ‘watchyourcaffiene.com‘ website - ran by the people who sold you the rfid kit.

Obviously the rfid reader would have to look cool, or be small enough to hide behind the kettle. A glowing coffee bean would be nice. With a tiny led growing deep inside its resiny shell. Or coffee makers could partner with watchyourcaffiene.com to sell units with built in monitors.

You can see your profile online, you can let other people see your profile online (sig. other for example). You can set alerts to hit your Phone / Twitter / Jaiku when you exceed your limit - or when the cafetiere enters the kitchen just as you are ABOUT to hit your limit. You are reaching for the kettle and suddenly “I’m sorry dave, you can’t have another cup”.

Taking this a step further, an RFID in your cup would track your personal consumption if you shared a cafetiere. If you had two cups you could have a Coffee and a Green Tea cup. Try to keep them in balance! “turn it into a game” as Seymour would say. You are reaching for the kettle and suddenly “I’m sorry dave, green tea this time”.

The company could milk the cash by offering smaller cups - which count less. If you were allowed 2 mugs a day, that could be 4 cups, or 6 minicups. They could sell you a mug, then when you drink more than 2 a day along with the “I’m sorry Dave…” message could suggest you buy a smaller cup.

Another revenue earner could be a SMS reply to the “Sorry Dave…” message saying “I’m having a decaff” or “I spilled it - honest” to lower your daily count. (btw did you know the caff from decaff goes into soft drinks - I never thought about where soft drink caffeine came from)

I like my current coffee cup though, so they would have to sell an add on monitor. This would actually look quite cool as a big tag for the handle - like when things in supermarkets are tagged with huge lumps of plastic to set off the alarms. A public symbol of your dependency. And they’d have to be dishwasher safe. A sophisticated mini sticker for underneath the cup would also work - more subtle.
And of course the league table of coffee drinkers could allow caffeine heads to show off their intake. “Dude I had like 3 mugs and 7 espresso cups this morning“. Blog chicklets to let you post your current daily and weekly count would promote the site.