For Example, Refrigerators


Suppose your refrigerator knew better than you what was inside of it. "So what?" you might ask. Well, think about it for a minute. You're at supermarket and realize you do not know whether you need eggs, so you buy a dozen just in case. When you get home, you find that you already have more than a dozen. Now you have too many. It is no big deal, you think. It is Saturday, and you can make omelets tomorrow for breakfast. But, if there had been an easy way for you to know that you did not have to buy the eggs, you most probably would have made use of it.

The intelligent refrigeratorone that can tell you what is inside, how much of it, when you last bought it, and perhaps even when it is time to throw it outhas been a technovision since the advent of the "third wave." But until RFID appeared, smart refrigerators remained in the world of the Jetsons. In the near future, RFID tags built in to packaging materials will be able to communicate with RFID receivers built in to refrigerators. As you will read in the manufacturing and retail chapters, although RFID tags are today being used on more macro containers (pallets, cartons, crates), the direction is for them to go down into individual packages.

We will not have to campaign to have food producers put RFID tags on their products (so that that the items can report for duty once home and nestled quietly in your refrigerator or pantry). Manufacturers will do so themselves for their own benefit, including tracking facilitation, faster checkout times, loss control, and increased sales. Even without quantifiable benefits being immediately known, GE, Sub-Zero, and other manufacturers will include an RFID reader with a wireless interface in their appliances, mostly because they can. The technology will be inexpensive compared to the overall cost of the appliance, and will be worthy of major marketing campaigns (allowing the manufacturers to have some fun while seriously differentiating themselves from their competition).

Let's step through the process of endowing a refrigerator with intelligence as an example so that you understand how the process can be extrapolated to other appliances.

A manufacturer can (potentially) install a combination RFID reader with 802.11b wireless Ethernet, a processor chip, and some RAM into a refrigerator for less than $50. This RFID reader will run a rudimentary Web server application that allows your wireless home networking system to access the data inside. Therefore, a Web browser running on your laptop or PDA becomes a window into your refrigerator's contents, capable of reading the constant stream of XML messages emanating from the reader.

Many computer-type devices (such as your home wireless DSL or cable gateway) come with built-in Web servers to enable you to control or inspect them from your browser. Typically, the manufacturer tells you to "navigate to http://192.168.1.1" (or whatever) to then view and control the device. (Likely, your current wireless hub announces the exact address for you to initially configure ittry it.) Your refrigerator or other major appliance will be no exception. Without the manufacturer putting any effort into the interface, the "raw" XML output (available on a specified Web page) of a streaming RFID reader might look like this:

 <RefrigeratorEnvironment>       <OperatingConditions>          <Temperature SetPoint="42.0"Current="41.5" />          <DoorStatus MainDoor="Closed"F          FreezerDoor="Closed"           TimesOpenedToDate="1,204"/>          <CompressorStatus State="On"PercentIdle="80"/>          <OperationalStatus State="Normal"/>       </OperatingConditions>       <CurrentContents>          <TopShelf>              <Item Type="Eggs" Vendor="Star Market"              Size="Large"/>              <Item Type="Butter" Vendor="Land"O Lakes"              Size="1lb"/>              <Item Type="Yogurt" Vendor="Yoplait"              Size="8oz"/>          </TopShelf>       </CurrentContents>     </RefrigeratorEnvironment> 

That might not be the prettiest display of information you have ever seen, but you could decode and make sense out of that fragment without a degree in computer science and would be able to "see" it merely by pointing your Web browser at your refrigerator's address. That in itself is a monumental step forward because, before XML and standard Web interfacing, to extract this kind of information from a processor you would have had to write a special program and understand some binary schemafar beyond the reach of the average consumerplus, you would have had to know a great deal about networking and protocols.

Today, someone with a rudimentary knowledge of modern computing can easily pull this XML fragment out of the refrigerator's HTML page into a spreadsheet or database package or XML-processing package, and with a few simple macros sort, organize, and redisplay it. Someone with only slightly more advanced computing skill could build a customized, personal refrigerator Web page, complete with rich graphics, that pulls this data into a live display (perhaps laid out in visually attractive tables) and even reaches to manufacturer Web sites to pull in icon graphics of each food item. (Web pages today are commonly "cooked" from connections to other sites.) Building "neat" Web pages out of fundamental data elements and accesses to other sites is something many homeowners do today. For fun, go to Google and search for "our vacation" (in quotation marks) and you will get more than 306,000 hits, most of which are small-time ordinary people who have created personal Web pages (and posted pictures of their Grand Canyon vacation). If you dig through a few sites, you will be notably impressed by the talent of ordinary people and their ability to tie schedules and calendars and "blogs" together. Inescapable Data will leverage the power of the ordinary person; manufacturers will hopefully only have to provide the basics.

Aside from food contents, the previous XML fragment also details operational status and controls that could be presented on a maintenance Web page. Perhaps you will build a custom page enabling you to control the set point of the freezer from any Internet-connected computer that can reach your home network. Or a page that displays how often the compressor cycles on compared to how often the door is opened. Perhaps you will create a JavaScript program that schedules the refrigerator to a far lower temperature during the less-expensive energy hours and allows it to "warm" during the more expensive hours. If you cannot, quite likely, you or a neighbor will have a teenager who can. That kind of engineering help will only be necessary if you want to avoid buying software from your local supermarket or appliance provider. The value of standard interfaces and formats is that you can source materials and applications from a wide range of providers.

Now that the data from your refrigerator lives within your home network, it also becomes part of your "everywhere" networkthat is, it is essentially available from the Internet itself (provided you enable such access and secure the access). You are then able to access it from any Internet-capable device, including the convenient-sized (and mobile) PDA. So while you are in the supermarket, you can glance at your PDA to find out whether you really are out of eggs (and with hardly any effort). At this point, you probably would not pay an extra $100 for a refrigerator that tells you how many eggs it contains. Over time, however, you probably will not have to pay anything extra at all for refrigerator smarts. (After all, do you pay extra for a computer-controlled carburetor or is it now standard in the industry?)

We believe that the capability will simply be there for us and for retailers to exploit because of the low cost of the base components and high use of standards and because interoperability allows for itmanufacturers do not need to invest much to bring the base capabilities to you. GE, for example, might put some cost into the actual electrical components, but no work into the interfacing and documenting. They do not have to work closely with the makers of the wireless or scanning products. They do not have to work closely with the cell phone companies, PDA companies, or the computer companies. Much like an owner's manual for an automobile is almost frighteningly small given the utility and complexity of cars, leverage comes from pervasive knowledge of how fundamental components and tools workknowledge that a rapidly increasing number of us now have.

For fun, let's continue exploring the value of having our refrigerator know about its contents. Our dinner preparation can now be expertly assisted by our home-automation system. The system can suggest a wide range of menu items all based on actual ingredients contained within your house, perhaps factoring in the age of certain meats and vegetables. Perhaps it will make suggestions based on average meal price, or possibly based on total carbohydrate goals, or even based on your schedule.

You did not pay extra for this menu capability either. You either downloaded it from a supermarket Web site or your teenager did a little Java/XML dabbling and whipped it up while on the school bus. In the old world, to automate anything in the house you had to have expert understanding of a wide breadth of technology, and deep pockets to afford the materials and time. In the new world, you need only to be slightly on this side of the connectivity dividean instinctive skill for future generations. RFID tags are not yet on our mass products, such as cereal, nor are refrigerators today equipped with RFID readers and wireless Web sites, but real advances are happening in that direction, lending credibility to that potential end state.

LG

Home automation is somewhat moving away from power on/off control and into more detailed appliance automation already. Your more expensive appliances, washers, refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, microwaves, and so forth are already equipped with CPUs and some sophisticated processing power. LG, which is a large Korean company that makes a full range of appliances and electronics, has a vision of a fully integrated house. It has already begun shipping refrigerators and other appliances with built-in networks that can cobble a connection to the Internet. (The details are not published, but some sort of wireless networking between the devices ultimately can connect to your home cable or DSL modem.) It has committed to have all of its appliances networkable within a short time. It claims[4] that some Japanese CEOs expect "appliances without an Internet connection will no longer be manufactured." More than 100 different devices from LG such as DVD players, TVs, PVRs (personal video recorders...Tivo-like), and large appliances will be outfitted with wireless connectivity.

The value of Internet-connected appliances is possibly marginal (if there are only rudimentary on/off type controls), but then again, in the Inescapable Data world, many minor values join together to bring new and unexpected values. LG's refrigerator has a computer screen built in to it and potentially a capability to allow entry of desired shopping items (to then be picked up by your home computer or PDA or possibly directly into the store itself). Recipes can also be directly downloaded to their oven for easier reading via a built-in screen and automated setting of temperature. Other LG appliances, such as the washing machine, allow downloading of new wash programs that would perhaps deal with particular clothes loads specially. Of course, the basic on/off capabilities and device health monitoring are availableconceivably tied all the way back to a service technician. Not yet on their radar screen, RFID data combined with appliance intelligence probably offers the most amount of utility in home appliance automation.

We applaud LG's vision. Today, few of us would pay thousands of extra dollars for an appliance that could be observed via the Internet, but as stated previously, the "smarts" will eventually be included at nominal or no extra cost and the utility will quickly be incorporated into our everyday lives. For example, we have all experienced that moment of panic when we wonder whether we turned off the oven or stove before leaving home. We have probably all wished, at least once, that we could turn on the oven while at the soccer field, for example (if merely to get a jump on preheating). Some readers may even have wished they could, while at the office, send a video message to the refrigerator for the next person who walks by (similar to taping a Post-it note). LG is taking steps to making these capabilities a reality, although initially, it may be via some proprietary and custom interfaces. In the Inescapable Data world, manufacturers will use standard networking and XML and other interface standards to provide these features at a low cost and allow the general public to string the values together and deepen the values. The trend toward appliance networking appears to be here.


[4] http://www.lge.com/products/homenetwork/html/lge_homenetwork.jsp.



    Inescapable Data. Harnessing the Power of Convergence
    Inescapable Data: Harnessing the Power of Convergence (paperback)
    ISBN: 0137026730
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 159

    flylib.com © 2008-2017.
    If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net