By Stephen Withers
Monday, 12 January 2009 08:40
Your IT - Entertainment
Back in the early 1980s, one of the promises of the "microprocessor revolution" was that relatively inexpensive electronic controllers would be upgradable in a way that their mechanical forebears never could be.
For example, a washing machine could be reprogrammed with an additional wash cycle for a new type of fabric.
A decade or two later, the "Internet revolution" gave us the idea that household devices could be interconnected, but that went about as far as putting an web browser on a fridge door.
As we approach the end of the Noughties, someone's taking another stab at turning these ideas into reality.
A company called Fugoo has used the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to show off its approach to the problem.
The Fugoo platform - developed in collaboration with Microsoft, VIA and Foxconn - is a WiFi-enabled hardware module plus Windows-based software designed to make it easy to build smart devices.
Suggestions include a coffee grinder that can look up the idea grind size for a specific type of bean, an alarm clock that uses traffic reports to advise how long it will take to drive to your first appointment of the day, a digital photo frame that can also display online content such as news headlines and sports scores, and a mouse that can monitor blood pressure and upload the readings to the treating doctor's system.
The specification includes a standardised docking port so that manufacturers of appliances and other devices can design products that are ready to accept a Fugoo module, just as today's cars and audio systems often include iPod docks.
Another important characteristic of Fugoo is that it is also designed to provide a user interface for the device.
Page 2 of 2Fugoo's founders are John Hui and Chris Chung (the founders of eMachines, a low-price PC vendor acquired by Gateway in 2004 and then by Acer in 2007), and Wayne Inouye (former CEO of eMachines and Gateway).
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"Many vendors are trying to come up with a multi-purpose magic bullet to satisfy all the information needs in the home," said Hui.
"But this sort of solution is bound to be expensive and complex. We're taking a fundamentally different approach, building devices with computing power and Internet connections to perform specific functions in order to keep costs low and the user interface simple."
He added "One of the reasons we think the time is right for Web-enabled devices is that there's been an explosion in the availability of Web widgets, which essentially automate the process of retrieving a particular category of information."
The first Fugoo devices are expected to go on sale by the end of 2009.
Company officials speculate the Fugoo devices may deliver some of the capabilities that have been imagined for years but have yet to materialise, such as the fridge that's smart enough to automatically re-order staples, or an automatic garden sprinkler that stays off if rain is forecast.
(I'm not sure if I'd trust the latter - there have been too many days this summer where rain was forecast but failed to eventuate in my neighbourhood!)
Fugoo was featured on the Microsoft booth at CES.
"The combination of Fugoo's platform and Microsoft Windows opens up almost limitless possibilities for transforming ordinary household items, allowing them to perform all sorts of new functions and services," said Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of Microsoft's original equipment manufacturer division.