With IoT you too can turn your home into a giant flashing 'HORSE BIRTH NOW' klaxon An American company has devised a system that takes over your entire home, makes all your lights start flashing and broadcasts neighing noises through the whole house when your pregnant horse starts giving birth. Custom electronics trade news website CE Pro, reporting on this interesting mashup of smart home and Internet of …
... for humans?
You get an alert telling you that Jasmine-Chardonnay is about to pop, and then you get real-time video of the event, with interactive discussion forum. A smaller window pops up, and Ray Winstone tells you it's your last chance to bet on the kid's size, hair colour, number of fingers, skin colour...
Paris, because she's clearly checking if it's been fitted OK.
Are you aware that there are nowadays people who upload the whole baby eruption process to Youtube for the, ahem, entertainment of the whole world?
God, I know you promised never to do the flooding thing again, but really, we would be quite OK with another go, please deliver us from ourselves.
@smudge - I won't try to guess your sex, but I'll guess that you have not personally experienced parenthood.
1. Humans about to give birth are quiet adept at signalling their situation to their partner. There is no need for a klaxon.
2. The idea of a device that is sutured to a very sensitive area of the participant in advance is likely to encounter... a certain amount of push-back.
"Warning: if you are of weak stomach, about to eat or have recently eaten, you may not wish to read past this point. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES click any of the links from here onward if you are squeamish. Don't say we didn't warn you"
Could I respectfully request you don't use the above terminology? I am human and telling me I can't do something will instantly make me want to do it. "Wet Paint?" I'll be the f*cking judge of that.
Why does this company not figure more highly on the Gartner magic quadrants? After all, a wall-sized video on loop play of up-close, high definition, equine birthing action would certainly linger in the mind of the average tech geek or exec at an IT conference. Get those creative juices flowing about the real world possibilities rather than slip into a coma induced by another ride on the hype cycle.
... this is totally fucking useless. Unless you are a yuppie, pasture ornament breeder of miniatures, and totally terrified of getting your own hands dirty and potentially breaking a nail ::gasp:: the horror! ... OH KNOWS!! call teh vet!!!! milquetoast city slicker, of course.
Around these here parts, there is somebody awake 24/7[0]. If the designated awake human somehow misses the critter going into labo(u)r, any combination of three or four of the dawgs will alert me (or the wife, or the foreman, in that order) that the event is immanent. We haven't missed a potentially problematic mammalian birth (horse, cow, sheep, hog, dawg, human ...) in several decades.
No fancy electronics needed. Or wanted. Adding complexity to a normal situation is asking for something to go wrong.
I do have cameras dotted around the place, but they are for liability reasons (the insurance company loves them). They also help dissuade potential criminals who might brave the Dawg&Broodmare Security System[tm] ... Most are video only, no audio needed. What little audio exists certainly isn't blared throughout Chezjake, waking up nonessential personnel ...
[0] Most humans are awake from 6AM to around 9 or 10PM, so that's covered. I'm a night-owl by nature and only need 4 hours sleep, so I take the late evening to 3AM shift. One of the field hands is a habitual early riser and spells me around 3AM.
Dammit Jake , you beat me to it.
Up until the end of the '90s I kept horses, I had two mares, one produced 5 foals and the other two before I quit owing to a divorce which made horse keeping unaffordable.
Normally there are physiological signs that tell you a mare 'might' foal within the next 24 hours, at that point I and all the other owners I have known, rearrange their time to keep an eye out. I can stand delivering foals, sheep, cows and kittens ( not that mares need much help) but I passed on attending my daughter's birth, the thought made me queasy.
"before I quit owing to a divorce which made horse keeping unaffordable."
"I passed on attending my daughter's birth, the thought made me queasy"
somehow I think these two may be connected, at least in the X's mind... [if you could BE THERE for the horse, how come you can't BE THERE for me???]
Not like you really would be doing anything. That 'lamaze class' stuff is HIGHLY overrated (I think it's more important for a husband to go to his JOB to earn money to pay for all that schtuff). That 'lamaze coach' garbage is just a way for women to "get their hubbies involved" when it's really just women's work [heh heh heh heh heh]. "call me when it's done"
As for me, I'd just stand there averting boredom by mental-calculating the total force of a birthing contraction, based on the fetal pressure meter and the estimated surface area of a 9 month pregnant uterus, and announce the results to the room when my mental-math was complete, something like "guess what, it looks like each contraction is the equivalent of bench pressing 500lb" and, of course, offering to stand in the right spot with a (baseball) catcher's mitt during the final phase of the birthing process...
[oh, wait, I *did* that!]
@Jake
... this is totally fucking useless. Unless you are a yuppie, pasture ornament breeder of miniatures, and totally terrified of getting your own hands dirty and potentially breaking a nail ::gasp:: the horror! ... OH KNOWS!! call teh vet!!!! milquetoast city slicker, of course.
That description conjures up the image of the artist formerly known as Jordan. Where's the mind bleach
... this is totally fucking useless. Unless you are a yuppie, pasture ornament breeder of miniatures, and totally terrified of getting your own hands dirty and potentially breaking a nail ::gasp:: the horror! ... OH KNOWS!! call teh vet!!!! milquetoast city slicker, of course.
I expect it'll feature in a story line in The Archers on Radio 4 before long... with Lynda Snell and her llamas
The amount of brain-dead IoT crap-ware available to people with more money than sense, that is described in the article is utterly nauseating!
I bet that among the shower of wireless receivers, smart home systems, cctv cameras, lights, speakers, and facebook feeds there's not the slightest thought of security, upgradeability or compatibility.
ohhh... you meant the mare's _biological_ processes!
Resistance is futile. There is no part of life, no matter how exotic, specialist, minority or obscure, that cannot be consumed by the Internet of Shyte. If the thought of an internet kettle had you steaming at the sheer pointlessness of all these supposed solutions looking for problems, soon enough you'll have wi-fi toothbrushes; web-enabled pillows in your bed; an internet electric blanket; an off-road-capable auto-dog-walking wheelodrone complete with cameras and satnav and—the pièce de résistance for owners of smaller pets—a Bluetooth Wheel for your rodent cage, so that you can set his or her exercise regime while switching into optional Charge-Grid Mode so that you can earn a few extra pennies selling electricity while Spunky the Hamster toils dutifully on her dynamo.
Just give up. Join the collective.
For it appears the days of wearily curling up in the hayloft on a cold midnight, one ear cocked for warning noises from mightily gravid Rona The Roan, with only a thermos of chocolate, pack of Marigold gloves and a long night of shuffling, farting beasts for company, to be followed by a spectacularly messy awakening at sparrowfart ... that'll all be history—
—as instead Retardis, my house AI, boils coffee at a civilised 07:30 with the calmly delivered news that: "Roan delivered a healthy foal at three-twenty, sir, with the aid of my Drone Special Arm Attachment. A video of the birth already has 471 Likes with 29 click-thrus to affiliate advertising. The automated global Name-A-Foal competition was concluded online just a few minutes ago. ... A photo has been uploaded to your phone, sir: you'll find it under Foaly McFoalface."
They've had these gizmos for cows already. It is attached to the tail by a rubbery clamp and has a SIM card inside. Not cheap, but it will dial your phone for you.
Here you go: https://moocall.com/
uBlock stopped 34 adverts, Ghostery stopped 7 trackers on that site, they must be short of cash :(
This horse birth klaxon isn't going to be for everyone, only those that are financially stable and able to pony up the money, it's not like it only costs a couple of bucks and if someone else releases one they will be jockeying for the top position. I don't think it will be a spur of the moment decision for those that do buy it in the end.
ponders this article...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/04/will-2018-be-the-year-of-the-neo-luddite
Well, I've been called a neo-luddite since roughly 1985 ... and all because I asked the question "Are you purchasing new kit because it works better for the intended application, or because it is flashy and the marketers and your peers insist you should purchase it?"
I still use the 1920s hand cranked deli slicer (I had a new set of sharpening stones made for it and replaced all the bearings/bushings about 20 years ago, when I found a couple of NOS blades for it in Nebraska). My friend has replaced the fancy electronic version he replaced it with four times.
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