Launching a Smart Home Gas/CO Detector, Suggestions Needed

? 2014?7?25????UTC+

8??1?19?19?? snipped-for-privacy@attt.bizz ???

arded as an advertisement. Please check it out on our facebook www.facebook .com/keplerteam

Actually we have nothing to do with Nest. We just make things people really need.

A smart gas/CO detector can deliver the information to your mobile phone vi a WiFi, so you can take care of kids, elders and pets when you're not in. B esides, when the level of gas/CO rises a little, it is hard to perceive but still harmful to our health. A smart gas detector can give you an early wa rning at that time.

Maybe you'd like to use a smart alarm after knowing more about them. :)

...other than ripping off their design.

s/need/want/

You're at least five years slow to market. You lose.

Umm, you leave your kids at home alone when they're incapable (young or infirm) of responding to an alarm? Your last point makes no sense. CO detectors are not new.

Good Lord, child. I know enough about CO alarms to know that I

*DON'T* want a "smart" one. Actually, I don't want one at all but that's irrelevant.

I doubt it. The smartphone manufactories make whatever the cellular providers think they can sell. Those providers are only interested in features that can be monitized and generate revenue. If you want location services, PTT service, phone directory backups, intercom service, etc, the data goes to the cellular provider for formatting, and is returned to the user. You get to pay for it in monthly or per use charges. Should someone actually produce a phone with a built in gas analyzer, the initial arrangement would probably be to send the (encrypted for privacy) raw data to a central server on the internet, and return formatted graphs and alarms to the handset. Eventually, someone will figure out how to do it all in the phone, thus killing that revenue stream.

Maybe. If all the computation and data collection is performed at a remote server, and only raw sensor data is sent to this server, then the battery drain with be minimal. This is roughly the way A-GPS and some mapping programs operate. The phone doesn't have the horsepower and battery to convert GPS satellite delay measurements into Lat-Long, so it sends the delays to a central server, which crunches the numbers, and returns the Lat-Long to the phone.

I don't have access to current numbers but at of about 3 years ago, conventional cell phones had an average lifetime of about 18 months. Smartphones were about 36 months. I think they're a bit higher now, but I'm not sure. Incidentally, this is why vendors can get away with non-replaceable batteries. The phone will be obsolete or replaced long before the battery dies.

In the distant past, that's been tried by adding additional protocols and codecs to the phone and then requiring customers to upgrade. The conversion from IDEN to CDMA is an example. It took years, so it's really that painful. More insidious were minor protocol and codec changes in the "baseband" part of the firmware. Those were handled with OTA updates. Todays phones are mostly SDR (software defined radio) designs, making such changes much easier.

However, if you're looking for regulatory interference, I think you'll find it coming from the ecology sector. In 2010, 152 million mobile devices were disposed, of which only 11% were recycled. (Mobile devices are cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), smartphones, and pagers). That sucks and will eventually come to the attention of the politicians. My guess is a useless deposit on cell phones to help pay for the recycling costs, which will mostly be education, promotion, and bureaucracy, just like the leaded glass program in California.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

If the smart phone evolves into the ultimate do-it-all personal accessory, why not fill it with goodies?

It would be cool if everyone had a gas/particulate/pollen analyzer, and all the data from everyone was consolidated and mapped in real time. That would spot gas leaks, solvent spills, dirty diesels, fresh-baked muffins, skunk trails, whatever.

Hey, RF spectrum analyzers. Gunshot sensors. Detect dead street lights. Food poisoning detectors. Wall-penetrating radar. Deadly lasers.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation

That's easy. One conglomeration does not fit everyones needs. The Swiss army knife design is an example. A few blades and screwdrivers are fine, but when someone tries to fill it with every possible attachment and tool, it becomes unwieldy, big, heavy, and clumsy to operate. Here's your Swiss army smartphone: $2,150

Drivel: Digital convergence at its best:

I carry a single blade pocket knife and a shirt pocket screwdriver. Modular, small and light are best for me. Same with my phones. I carry a common cell phone for talking, and a smartphone with the cellular radio part disabled, and used as a PDA. One benefit is that I can look at my schedule or phonebook while I'm talking on the phone.

My guess(tm) is that by the time the manufactory gets around to integrating the entire marketing wish list of gizmos and gadgets to include in a cell phone, it will be unwieldy and unusable, like the giant Swiss army knife. I'm not talking about adding features and functions in software, but hardware additions like an air quality analyzer, breath analyzer, CO alarm, RF exposure meter, telescope, microscope, wireless power, high voltage fence charger (for anti-theft), IRDA, I/O for every conceivable connector, LED projector, projecting keyboard, DVD player (this is real), Geiger counter, radiation dosimeter, ultrasonic tape measure, lie detector, and I better quit now before my brain overheats. What all these have in common are that they are hardware enhancements which will add bulk, weight, and battery drain. Would you buy a phone that has all of these? Probably not. Google thinks it has the answer with Project ARA: Basically, a modular phone. You only plug in the modules that you need. Fully loaded, it will probably be a monster, but if you're judicious about the selection of modules you elect to drag around with you, it probably will turn into quite a nice device.

Note that this is from Google, not the cell phone vendors or service providers. They don't want anything that's user customizeable. Instead, they prefer to release new options and features in a controlled manner, so that phones are obsoleted and replaced at a controlled rate. That maximizes their profits through churn. Having all the fancy features available at one time is not going to be profitable for either the manufacturer or service provider. Only Google, which has more than once provided a disruptive influence on the cellular industry, can pull it off.

You can do some of that with an optical dust sensor. I think I covered how that works last month. Once you have an air path established (with a fan and plenum), you can add sensors along the path for other molecules. However, I don't think it will ever be small enough to fit inside a smartphone. More likely, it will be an external box, that communicates with the smartphone via Wi-Fi or BlueGoof. Same with some of the other bulky hardware add-ons.

Much as I like cool, I find that cool often implies a short term fad or flash in the pan which appears, sells furiously for a month or two, and then disappears. Kinda like the Pet Rock. Sniffing diesel and counting skunks gets old very quickly.

You left out the big one. Star Trek Tricorder also known as universal medical monitor and diagnostic device. You can easily do a pulse oximeter today using the camera and two LEDs (IR and red) of a dongle. An ECG/EKG heart monitor is also fairly easy. After that, it gets messy and expensive, but still possible. The big problem is not making it work or getting the price down. It's getting over the FDA hurtles and the AMA obstacle course. Also, the liability insurance needed to prevent claims that your device grievously injured the user when they tried to swallow the device.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I have a flip phone, a Casio "Rock", which is basically indestructable. It makes calls and gets calls, nothing else.

And Spartan Swiss Army Knife. And, of course, at least three pens at all times.

And I carry an extra Audi key, because you never know when that damned car may decide to locy yopu out.

Surgical implantation?

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation

Good. That's the way it should be done. However, no smartphone, PDA, tablet, netbook, Chromebook, or other portable device for a phonebook or schedule? I find that carrying some computing power and storage around to be quite useful, just not inside the phone.

Two pens, one screwdriver, felt tip pen, tuning tool, hemostat, and 6" rule. 3 large and 1 small paper clips in back: Also in the pocket are far too many business cards, scratch paper to be filed, several smart cards, and one anti-acid pill.

I carry two sets of keys because I'm constantly locking them inside the car. Just one alarm dongle with a spare in the office.

Ah, the Borg. Its very likely to happen eventually, but it won't be initially for phones. It will likely be pitched as "sensory augmentation" or "aging compensation". My guess(tm) is that the sensors will have built in wireless mesh network communications that terminates in some kind of wearable computah or smartphone. In other words, no tangle of wires. Add direct neural stimulation of the brain, and in theory, you can surgically implant a CMOS camera in the back of your head, and have rear view vision. Whether the smartphone is central to such a system is questionable. Personally, I doubt it because smartphone I/O is limited by what can be done on a tiny display. More likely we'll be carrying a quantum computer in our pockets, that talks to the sensors and actuators all over the body. If you want to talk and hear, a bone conduction transducer can easily be implanted and a cellular modem attached to the pocket computah.

I think Ray Kurzwell has it right:

Today:

Tomorrow:

and the cyborg:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Looks like a SA marketing gizmo; one of every blade they make.

A smart phone without a data connection is about as useless as a rock and chisel.

I have a full-function smart phone (Moto MAXX) and wouldn't be without it. I could actually go without a cell phone but we don't have a land line (DSL only) at home.

Don't carry either. I'm always looking for something to write with at work, even though I have a hundred pens and pencils around the cube.

My truck has a keypad on the door but I only locked keys in the car once and that was 30 years ago. I had them in my coat pocket and decided at the last minute to leave it in the car.

Doesn't solve the battery problem. As long as my smart phone battery lasts the day, I'm fine with it. I probably have about a 3X margin, so I should be good for the contract. Laptops are getting a lot better now, too.

Of course. No sane person would buy one for themselves. However, as a gift to someone else, it's possible. They've been selling rather well since 2006 with no end in sight: "We've sold 20 to retailers so far, and we can't get them in fast enough," says Garry Woodhouse of Whitby and Co, sole importer of Wenger knives into Britain." Never underestimate the value of "cool".

I use Wi-Fi (because I'm cheap).

"Cutting the cord" on POTS (plain old telephone service) phone service is common. 40% of US households do not have a POTS phone line. However, there are some issues: I don't have an office POTS phone in the office. Instead, I used VoIP service and my cell phone. The main problem I have with using the cell phone for everything is the lousy audio quality. Cell phone to cell phone is even worse, due to added latency. So, my cell phone use is mostly to ask people to call me back on the VoIP line, or at home on the POTS line. The results is my total cell phone bill is only about $15/month. Sometimes I wish that one could switch codecs on a cell phone, even if I had to pay extra.

At a former employer, we were always short on red felt tip pens, used to mark up schematics. My boss even bought a box of pens, literally threw them all over the lab area, so that we would not be chronically short. About 2 weeks later, they were gone. Nobody had a clue where they were going until one of the engineers left. When we cleaned out his file cabinet, we found about 200 pens of all denomination. Nobody ever suspected he was a pen hoarder because he too was always searching for red felt tip pens in the lab.

My Acer C720 Chromebook runs 6-8 hrs per charge. Well, a bit less than 4 hrs playing an HD movie in a continuous loop until the low battery alarm came on. What's different is that the laptops are drawing less power due mostly to better chips (Intel Haswell) and lower power drives (SSD). LED backlighting is nice, but doesn't really save much power. AMOLED will drop the power consumption even more. While Moore's Law will limit future improvements in computing, it won't be an problem in improving sensors and samplers, which is where the Tricorder problem resides. There's plenty of opportunity to use MEMS hardware to improve these. Even crude improvement will help, such as using an ear lobe clip for the pulse oximeter instead of a finger sensor. Want an ear ring that also measures your pulse and oxygenation level that talks to your smartphone via a BT LE link?

Incidentally, what inventors are trying to do with smartphones:

Here's bad start. Turn your $500 smartphone into a $4.95 DMM: Once again, the challenge is in the sensors.

Eventually smartphones will become smarter than the GUM (great unwashed masses). I'm not sure the GUM will buy into a technology that's smarter than they are.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

"Sold 20 to retailers" sounds like a marketing gimmick.

WiFi isn't everywhere. My smart phone is often my hot spot. It doesn't work both ways. ;-)

Some issues. Few important ones. Mostly just silly or plain FUD. They neglect the advantages, too.

We've had a land line one year out of the last decade and then there was never a phone plugged in (no naked DSL available at the time). I prefer not having it. I'd rip the DSL line out in a nanosecond, if there were a better alternative.

I don't have any issues with latency(?). Sometimes the half-duplex thing is bad (some people like to hear themselves talk).

I probably have 200 mechanical pencils in my basement. Not enough. Red pens are at a premium at work and good ones are hard to find (I buy my own). I don't like felt-tip pens, though. They're not sharp enough and dull quickly from there. I do a lot of my markups on PDFs, now, though. It's easier to keep them filed on a hard disk than paper.

No, I don't want and ear ring of any kind. ;-)

OTOH, my boss has an app that makes a pretty nice SPL meter.

Sure they will. Many a marketeer will be employed selling the phones to them.

Roll forward about 15 years and a smartphone will not be measured in MIPS but instead will have an IQ. It will pass a Turing test for simulating a human. It will be conversant and fully interactive. It will have pheromone sensors to measure your mood, and monitor your every move and action. In some areas, it will be part of you. That's all fine Science Fiction but what will happen when you get into an argument with your smartphone? If it's smarter than you are, more knowledgeable (access to internet), and can read between your lines (psychology software), you are highly likely to lose that argument, if not every argument with your smartphone. Would you willingly pay for something that makes you feel inferior and possibly embarrassed? Better yet, would you like to engage is some discussion, and have your smartphone's universal translator correct your conversation for grammar, accuracy, relevence, and honesty? Kinda like wearing a lie detector full time.

I deal with computer users every day, and I see the beginnings of such thinking about computing. Failing to fix some obscure computer problem, I'm often asked for something "easier". Like I said, I'm not sure we're ready for a really smart smartphone.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

People will buy the phones that make them feel good. The mean, sarcastic phones will have a limited market.

Just like people visit the web sites that they like.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation

Such predictions are notoriously bad. We're all supposed to be flying to work in cars that fold up into briefcases, too. Innovation always comes from where it's not expected. If you could lay a ruler on the future, investing would be trivial. PV might even work, some day.

If that were possible, it would be pretty damned poor marketing, no? It's supposed to be a "part of me"? I may bitch at my knees not doing what I want them to but they don't embarrass me.

I don't have that problem now with a speeelczecher. It corrects me. All is good.

I don't see it as the possibility, or the problem, that you do. As long as it has an OFF, what's the problem? Afraid you then can't think without it? There is some of that - calculators made it harder to do arithmetic but OTOH, spell checkers have improved my spelling.

My boss has a navi app (iPhone) that has an incredibly sexy voice but also has some pretty good putdowns when you make a wrong turn (he had to demonstrate it in downtown Detroit at 10PM). Funny as hell.

Marketing.

When they overcome that problem, they will rule the world! :)

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to 
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.