On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 05:49:03PM -0430, Greg Ihnen wrote:
What standards? The RFID tag on the milk carton will, essentially, replace the bar code once RFID tags become cheap enough. It'll be like an uber-barcode with a bunch more information.
For keeping track of how much, cheap sensitive pressure transducers will know by the position of the RFID tag combined with the weight of the thing at that location in the refrigerator. There's no new standard required.
The technology to do this exists today. The integration and mainstream acceptance is still years, if not decades off, but, IPv6 should last for decades, so, if we don't plan for at least the things we can see coming today and already know feasible ways to implement, we're doomed for the other unexpected things we don't see coming.
What reads the RFID's and the pressure sensors? What server or application receives this data and deals with it according to the user's desires? How does that data or the information and alerts this system would generate get to the user's devices? There has to be a device in the home or a server somewhere for a service the home owner subscribes to which keeps an inventory of all these things and acts on it.
Do you really think it's going to be common place for people to have this kind of technology and more importantly use it?
And why do you think the fridge manufacturers will get it right in cheaply-made consumer-grade products, when it's not being done right in muh pricier automated self-check-out checkstands? I avoid self-check-out checkstands because they fail in one way or another so damnably often. My last encounter had the software failing to realize that a package of 100 nuts and 100 screws weighed a significan amount; the result was that for each such package I tried to check out, I had to have someone from the store come over, log in, do something, and log out again. Five times total. *Not* satisfactory. I don't expect that the fridge makers will do any better. -- Mike Andrews, W5EGO mikea@mikea.ath.cx Tired old sysadmin