The promise of future technology is that all your dumb household stuff will become smart. The lock on your front door, your smoke alarm, your thermostat will all “speak” to you through your phone, and vice versa. The problem with this domestic Internet of Things (IoT)—apart from the annoyance of receiving messages from your coffeemaker—is that it requires swapping perfectly serviceable gadgets in favor of ones that can connect to the cloud.
Now there’s another option. LittleBits, which makes brightly colored modules that snap together to create electronic circuits, is now selling a $249 DIY kit for those who want to turn their analog abodes into WiFi-enabled smart homes. The set extends the use of the recently launched cloudBit, giving users a menu of projects that include a remote pet feeder, a smart air-conditioner, and a garage door monitor. It essentially allows people to build their own IoT hardware without having to wait for companies like Nest, GE, or Apple to roll out another product.
“The electronics industry pretty much remains a very top-down industry that is very much controlled by large companies, by experts, by engineers,” says LittleBits CEO Ayah Bdeir. “Very few people are able to gain access and innovate in it.” Her three-year-old startup makes it as easy to customize hardware as it is to assemble Ikea furniture.
The Smart Home Kit comes with 14 bits, including the cloudBit as well as five new ones: an MP3 player, a temperature sensor, a number counter (which, for instance, can be attached to the temperature sensor to display Fahrenheit or Celsius values), a threshold (which can turn a sensor into a trigger module), and an infrared transmitter (which can be paired with an AC switch to turn appliances on or off). The company includes an infographic poster cataloging a host of potential projects, from a device that adds toilet paper to your digital grocery list when someone takes the last roll to an alarm that sounds when your fridge is left open too long. Makers can control the devices through the LittleBits-hosted Web app; their own API, orIFTTT (If This Then That), a service that connects to a channel like Twitter or Facebook to trigger an action such as a tweet or Facebook status update.
Courtesy LittleBits
“The idea is that you are able to take control of your home, take control of your devices, and innovate in the middles where people haven’t created products for you,” Bdeir says. “We’re not out to replace Nest, but why shouldn’t you be able to make your own?”
The kit is available for preorder today, and beginning in December, will be sold in select RadioShack locations. In June, RadioShack announced that it would start carrying the LittleBits in a bid to remake itself as a Home Depot for tech geeks.
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