There were so many great tech products for families that came out of the Consumer Electronics Show this year like the kitchen of the future, cool home security systems that don’t look at all like security systems, even smart appliances that do the cooking for you (kind of). Home automation is clearly a trend that’s not going away. And jumping on this trend: Mother, a crazy-looking gadget that could make your smartphone a window into everything that’s going on inside your home.
(And that’s not necessarily a good thing.)
Mother by Sen.se is a programmable gadget that acts as a main communication tool for any activity you want to keep track of in your house. It comes with a set of “Motion Cookies” that are these little sensors that you can attach to anything you want to monitor, analyze or track from a toothbrush to a thermostat.
The sensors can detect movement, temperature, patterns then analyze this data and send info on up to 24 of them to your mobile device for you to view in a master dashboard.
Want to see if your kids are really brushing their teeth for two minutes? You can attach a Motion Cookie to the brush and get alerts right to your smart phone. How about monitoring how whether the plants need watering? Attach a Motion Cookie. There are a slew of apps available for these Motion Cookies that let you track everything from daily actions to things like the temperature of your house, your activity level, and your sleep patterns or, how many times the fridge door is opened and closed.
Yes, really.
Now, I can certainly see the benefit of attaching a Motion Cookie to the front door, for example, especially if you have older kids who are able to stay home alone. It’s even interesting for things like tracking toothbrush habits in younger kids. But analyzing every single thing going on in every room in the house seems more Big Brother than Mother to me. So I’m interested to see how this plays out, and whether it takes the place of something like We-Mo technology which maybe does a little less, but what it does is simple, and above all, proven very useful.
The website personifies Mother, stating “she is like a mom, but only better.” Not to take too much insult here but uh, we all think moms are pretty great to begin with. Even if our jobs don’t include tracking the humidity levels in our homes 24/7.
Mother will be available in February. The initial bundle will include one Mother home monitoring system and one box of four Motion Cookies for $222. For more information, visit Mother Sen.se.
