So here’s the scenario:
You’re at work, on vacation, goofing off on holiday… but you have that nagging feeling that the relentless rainstorms back home might be finally adding up to enough to flood your basement. Again. Although you can’t see it, things are happening pretty much exactly as you fear is starting to look like this:
Not so bad you think? EXACTLY! It’s just starting to come into the basement. Luckily you have a Twine wireless sensor unit ready to detect the state of things and it sends you a lovely notification through text, email, tweet, etc… Like so:
Now you can call your family, neighbors, house-sitter, handyman, and make sure things are taken care of BEFORE there’s any real damage from an otherwise avoidable disaster. But wait! The Twine is capable of doing a lot more. And if you are really clever, and one of those home inventor/creative-types, you’re pretty much only limited by your imagination. Here’s the lowdown for Twines own site:
Listen to your home, wherever you are.
Twine alerts you to small problems before they become big problems. Quick Wi-Fi setup and AAA batteries that last up to 3 months let you drop Twine anywhere you want to monitor temperature, vibration and orientation. Additional wired sensors detect floods, leaks, opened doors, and signals from your other home systems. Tell a web app what to listen to with simple rules, and you’ll get notifications and peace of mind via email, SMS, Twitter and more.
How it works
Twine is a wireless sensor block tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. The durable, rubbery block has Wi-Fi, on-board temperature and orientation sensors, and an expansion connector for other sensors. Power is supplied by micro USB or two AAA batteries that will run for up to 3 months (and Twine will email you when you need to change the batteries).
The Twine web app makes it simple to set up and monitor your Twines from a browser anywhere. You set rules to trigger messages — no programming needed. The rules are put together with a palette of available conditions and actions, and read like normal sentences: WHEN moisture sensor gets wet THEN text “The basement is flooding!”
Because the hardware and software are made for each other, setup is easy. There’s nothing to install — just point Twine to your Wi-Fi network. Sensors are immediately recognized by the web app when you plug them in, and it reflects what the sensors see in real time, which makes understanding and testing your rules easy.
Listen to your world
Talk to the Web
Out of the box, Twine has several internal sensors.
Temperature
Measure the temperature. Are your pipes freezing? Is your air conditioning broken? Is it nice up by the lake today?
Vibration
Sense when Twine starts or stops shaking, with adjustable sensitivity. Know when your laundry’s done, your sump pump starts, or someone’s knocking at the door.
Orientation
Sense which side of Twine is facing up. Trigger actions by flipping Twine over, or detect when the garage or the oven is left opened.
Plug in additional external sensors and they pop up on the web app, ready to use.
External temperature
Measure the temperature where your Twine can’t go. Make sure your freezer or refrigerator is working properly, your grain silo isn’t too hot, or that the weather outside is nice.
Magnetic switch
Triggered when a magnet is moved toward or away from it. Get notified when your door or window is opened, the mailbox is opened, or your dog goes outside.
Moisture sensor
Detect the presence of water. Know when your basement floods, when your AC’s drip pan is overflowing, or when it rained.
Breakout board
Plug in your own digital input without soldering. Terminals for signal, 3.3V power and ground are provided. Connect your doorbell, garage door or other electrical system.
Cloud Shield
The easiest way to make an Arduino talk to the Internet. Add Twine actions to your project, or use Arduino to build custom sensors for Twine.
Twine can contact you in a number of ways.
- Text message *
- Phone call (text-to-speech)*
- HTTP GET and POST requests
- Put your real-time Twine sensor information in Panic Status Board or your own webpage
* With optional paid account: $5/month for 100 text messages, $9/month for 200 text messages or voice calls.
via Supermechanical: Twine
These is one cool unit. We here at QTOOTH can’t wait to get our hands on one. I see these, or similar devices, becoming routine in many homes in the near future. Can you say, “Hey insurance company! How’s about a discount on our home or renter’s policy if we promise to run these?”
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