Sen.se founder and designer Rafi Haladjian has an undeniable penchant for humanizing and softening technologies with a friendlier face. His rabbit and wifi-connected Nabaztag (Armenian for hare) was an early pre-cursor to the flood of Internet of Things devices flooding the market today. His latest device, formerly a beta project and now finalized with national availability, is a maternal-spirited technology designed to keep a careful and nurturing eye on everything happening in the home with his latest daily life monitoring system, Mother.
Like the perceptive senses of a real life mum, the cute Weeble Russian nesting doll shaped Mother is designed to keep careful tabs on a wide array of daily habits of a household using wireless battery-powered Motion Cookies, color-dipped wafer sensors designed to stick onto any surface and capable of collecting an array of information. For example, attach a Motion Cookie onto a refillable water bottle and monitor/track daily H20 intake; slide a sensor onto a child’s toothbrush and a parent could make sure junior is practicing daily dental hygiene.
Each wifi network connected Cookie (up to 24 per Mother base unit) is equipped to monitor movement, temperature, and the presence of an occupant in a room, with a battery life of one year and 10 days of built-in memory. In combination with the Mother base unit, data collected is then served visually as a lifestyle storybook – called Senseboard – with an array of mobile device apps displaying the “when” and “how much” noted by the watchful sensors of Mother (currently numbering nine, including apps for monitoring coffee consumption, walking, sleep, door access, and temperature). It’s obvious Mother + Motion Cookies could prove most useful tool for parents seeking a technological aid for child monitoring, where an extra set of eyes and ears are always welcome, but could also be used as a whole house equivalent of the FitBit.