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This 'Smart Tech' For Your Home Actually Exists

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Some people dream of a "connected" home filled with the chiming voices of machines instead of people. "Smart objects" talking to one another, lights blinking and alerts beeping as they automate the domestic work you can't quite be bothered to do. Tech evangelists cite endlessly the projection that by 2020 there will be 6.4 billion connected ‘things’, many of which will be in the home.

But for others, the idea of a "smart home" is a dystopian nightmare: every connected object brings another means of harvesting data, and another corporation to sell it on to. We welcome surveillance into our homes, and pay for the privilege. And every device offering out-of-the-box omniscience is hackable, from smartphone doorbells to baby monitors (appropriated as the plot for a lurid –but believable – episode of CSI Cyber called ‘Kidnapping 2.0’)

From self-watering plants to camera-equipped vacuums, we wonder whether the effort of keeping up with smart tech can sometimes outweigh the effort of using normal, not-connected household appliances. Here, we’ve rounded up fourteen of the weirdest "connected" home appliances, and explained what they do, so you can decide for yourselves how smart they are.

The Connected Crockpot

One for the most neurotic and time-pressed chefs, you can leave dishes to stew in this slow cooker and activate it remotely an hour or so before you arrive home, adjusting the temperature or turning it off entirely when you choose. But reviews citing a lengthy set-up, wifi crashing and slow cooking time (yes it’s a slow cooker, but really, really slow) beg the question: does anyone actually need a connected crockpot? Perhaps not. Perhaps this is this the kind of white elephant gift you would reserve for your least-favourite aunt, or the wedding of your favourite frenemy.

CleverPet: the connected dog video game console

A console created to "engage idle paws", CleverPet seems like a good idea, making your pet wait to be fed while you're out, or training them to beg for treats. But if leaving your dog home alone makes you feel bad, leaving it with an "automatic, engaging, adaptive" might not make you feel a whole lot better. The machine slowly distributes food after your dog completes interactive challenges, promising that, as the website says, "a dog with a job is a happy dog". It’s like Silicon Valley Libertarianism, but for dogs.

FitBark

It’s true that obesity can shorten an animal’s lifespan, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting your dog to get enough exercise. This dog version of the Fitbit, the health tracking wristlet for humans, quantifies your dog's every move so that you can keep tabs on their fitness. Why do we need the Quantified Dog from FitBark? Social media has helped us sell away our personal lives, our friendships, and more recently, through health trackers, our bodies as data, and now comes the idea of data-harvesting our pets too. How long have we managed to walk our dogs without fitness monitors? If they don’t get out enough, don’t dogs usually bark and complain?

The Amazon Echo

The corporate lovechild of 2001: A Space Odyssey ’s Black Monolith and Hal 9000, this home assistant robot is voiced by ‘Alexa’, who replies every time you speak her name. All-knowing and all-hearing, Alexa can play music, order products online and answer trivia questions in her measured, neutral tone. Install a few apps and she can also tell gently off-colour jokes (awkward) and imitate the sound of human laughter (even more awkward). Oh, and Alexa’s always listening, as illustrated this Guardian writer’s experiences living with the device for a week and having Alexa interrupt his conversations. Probably best left to those who don’t mind surveillance, or enjoy shouting at house-servants (but cannot afford the upkeep).

The iKettle

You bought the iPhone, now buy the iKettle. Something of an update on the Teasmade machine of old, the Amazon comments on this smartphone-operated kettle are a litany of woes, each grimly predictable. With the iKettle, users trade "connectability" for convenience: you could invite your friends over for tea using the "share" feature across your online "kettle network", only – say its users – when the wifi signal drops the kettle needs to be reset. You could enjoy pre-boiled water for your morning tea, except claim users, that the base is broken, the lid won’t close. Perhaps the paltry hissing sound the iKettle makes as it attempts to boil reminds you of the spite you feel at having blown £89 on this malfunctioning appliance. You could just buy a better-quality, standard kettle, which saves time by boiling the water faster. The choice is yours.

Quirky Egg Minder Wink App Enabled Smart Egg Tray

It's actually called that! This is it. Our glorious future. Here, in your fridge, counting and recounting your eggs. Don’t forget your eggs. Ever. With the Quirky Egg Minder, LED lights will indicate the oldest egg in your egg tray. You will receive push notifications about the number of eggs left, letting you know precisely when to dash to the nearest shop to purchase more. The Amazon reviews have it right: this device will pay for itself within a mere 39 trays of eggs. Aside from purchasing an egg minder, you should probably also download the phone app, to check your egg count daily. I ran out of eggs once, and it ruined my week. Don’t let it happen to you.

Parrot, the connected plant

Getting your first plant is something of millennial life event. You tend to it, show it off, lovingly water it every week. Then you forget about it and it dies. Following this logic, it might seem a good idea to invest in an Internet of Things device like Parrot, to remind you to tend to that fern, cactus, or extensive hydroponic weed set-up you have stashed away in your basement. But the ‘connected plant’ remains a joke among even the most dedicated tech enthusiasts. Should nature really be monitored with real-time chart plotting and analysis? Doesn’t it sort of defeat the purpose? Are you really so bound-up in the world of screens that you can’t check in on a plant in your windowsill? If you need this you probably shouldn't be trusted with plants... not even a cactus.

The wifi-enabled surveillance vacuum

A robotic vacuum seems like a good idea, not least one with an auto-emptying dustbin. But why does it need to have a camera? So you can see the world from the point of view of a robotic vacuum, and examine the lint under your sofa up close? The manufacturers, Samsung, write that their NaviBot S model "employs an onboard camera and two CPU chips to help create a map of your living space", implying that the vacuum will very soon get to know your home. Along with the camera it comes with a mic-is your vacuum watching and listening to you? At £390, those who buy this product likely get all the excitement they deserve from a wifi-enabled dirt collector….

The Bluetooth toilet

Never again will you need to physically touch your toilet in order to flush it: this $4000 (£2800) toilet can be controlled with an app instead. Lixil’s ‘Satis’ smart toilet also lets you spray air freshener, play music through its built-in speakers and compile a diary of bowel movements (no, really). If these weren’t enough reasons not to buy a connected toilet, the product was later found to be worryingly easy to hack.

Smartypans skillet

And now we get into health-monitoring territory, with a "connected pan " that reminds you of the nutritional content in what you’re eating. Smartypans (they only exist in the plural) integrates with fitness trackers and accepts voice commands as you add ingredients to the pan. It then uses weight and temperature sensors to calculate exact nutritional value and report this to a phone app. Which could actually be useful, especially if you’re a professional athlete or eating for recovery, but could also allow you to obsess over what you eat to a very fine degree. We're on the fence.

Vessyl Pryme

No smart object list would be complete without Vessyl, the "supercup" that "automatically tracks and displays your personal hydration needs" (in other words, informs you when you’ve drunk enough water). Pilloried by media and the public alike, Vessyl still managed to raise $1 million in pre-orders before running into difficulties and delaying their orders. Now the ‘Vessyl Pryme’ has hit the market, the product is slightly different to what was originally promised, but measures how much you drink and sends you push notifications telling you how far away you are from your "Pryme" hydrated state.

HAPIfork

HAPIfork, as you might tell from the name, monitors how many bites you eat, and "coaches" you into eating more slowly with the aim of helping you lose weight. It relays this data to a phone app, where you can track your "meal stats" and feel vaguely guilty over your timed "fork servings". It’s easy to see the good intentions, however misguided, behind this product – taking time to appreciate food is a good thing, and the device might help people suffering from eating or digestive issues. But it’s also deeply weird: users are encouraged to share their progress with their friends, because what’s the point in owning a connected fork if you can’t broadcast on Twitter and Facebook the rate at which you stuff food into your face?

The Smart Mirror

An internet-age take on a very old idea, this light-up mirror replicates different settings (cloudy weather, daylight, dim restaurant lighting) so you can do your makeup to suit them. Costing $400 (£280), the Simplehuman wide-view sensor mirror is cord-free, rechargeable, sensor-enabled and comes with an app to "capture light settings from the world around you and accurately recreate them" (you could also just do your makeup by a window…) An ideal gift for people who earn a living from YouTube makeup tutorials, lighting nerds and the vain, this product encapsulates just about everything about the selfie generation.

Photo-taking fridge

Called the ‘smartest fridge ever ’, Samsung’s Family Hub comes with a 21.5 inch vertical touch-screen attached to its side which logs your groceries, displays memos and compiles a family calendar. It also has fisheye cameras mounted to the inside of the fridge which snap a photo every time you close its door. These can then be accessed from an app when you’re at the shop and need to remember what to stock up on. Another example of a thing designed to watch over other things, this one is quite the investment at $5999 (£4201), though at least it’s more visually impressive than a HAPIfork.

The doorbell that watches you

Do you dislike face-to-face conversation? Are you gripped by paranoia, or afraid of leaving the house? This is the product is for you. The Ring Video Doorbell has a built-in motion sensor, meaning when someone is outside your home it sends you mobile alerts and records a video of your visitor as they stand on your doorstep. You can then watch them from the comfort of your smartphone and even speak to them through the doorbell. Because you should be scared of everyone: someone ringing your doorbell, the purpose for which the doorbell was designed, is absolutely, definitely a sign that they’re up to no good!

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