Want to monitor things and environments remotely without a nerd degree? Get a tweet when your laundry’s done, an email when AC breaks and your pets are at home, or a text message when you left the garage door open. Twine is the simplest way to get the objects in your life texting, tweeting or emailing.
A durable 2.7″ block provides internal temperature and orientation sensors, and runs on two AAA batteries and connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi. A simple web app lets you monitor your Twine and tell it when to alert you with human-friendly rules – no programming needed.
The full sensor package includes 3 external sensors: moisture detection (“is it wet?”), magnetic switch (“is it open?”), and breakout board (make your own sensor).
$ 214.95
updated review—half baked, much to my disapointment,
OK- here’s an update. i’m updating this review to 3 stars from 1. i picked up another unit, set it up exactly the same way, and it worked. not really sure why- used the same browser and the same machine. so now i have this cool wi-fi sensor, which i had planned on using with the mag switch on my garage door, but here’s the reason why this review isn’t 5 stars…the battery life. i’ve had the unit running with the mag switch attached, and it died after about 5 days. this isn’t quite the 6 weeks of battery life that was promised. i understand marketing claims, but the gap is ludicrous. i’m currently testing the unit without any external sensor attached, and it’s much, much better, but you’re pretty limited without sensors, and most of my use cases would require the twine running on battery. i understand that the team is working on fine tuning their system, and my hope is that this will improve considerably. (knowing what i know about embedded systems and software, do i think they can hit 6 weeks of battery life from where they are today? no.)
the bottom line is that certain specs and functionality were claimed on kickstarter, and that’s what people payed for. So i’m still disappointed by overall. if battery life improves to anything that would make the unit practical in real use- i’ll gladly come back and amend my review to 5 stars.
_____________Original Review____________________
i very enthusiastically signed up and funded the kickstarter campaign- i love the concept, and very much want to support cool hardware startups like the supermechanical team…they were slow in shipping the original device i ordered via kickstarter, so i ordered another one via amazon which just showed up.
however, when i received the device i was pretty dismayed by the setup process and what i read on the forums about the Wi-Fi chipset (B-only- doesn’t seem to work at all with my Airport Express based network) and the battery life. in fact, i still don’t have the unit phoning home and appearing in the the dashboard, despite creating a separate wi-fi network, port forwarding, switching browsers, using different DNS servers, setting a static IP for the device, double checking batteries, about 20 resets, and countless other troubleshooting measures.
just to put this in context, i’m a major geek, i work in the tech industry, and understand the complete stack from the low level API’s to IP networking. i’ve hacked embedded linux devices for years, and have 30-40 IP based devices on my home network- from home automation systems to servers, tivos, etc. Trust me when i say this- if i can’t get this thing working- it probably isn’t ready for prime time.
I think quite honestly that the Wi-Fi chipset on the board is just a complete deal-breaker- and it will kill this thing before it gets off the ground unless they can get a better version out quick. supporting B only is somewhat ridiculous in this day and age- and it already appears to have created broad incompatibilities with most home Wi-Fi networks.
i hope to amend this review if i can actually get any level of tech support and actually get it working…(without having to go out and buy the one wireless router that they’ve apparently tested it with).
stay tuned…
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|Not ready for prime time.,
Very limited capability, closed system, which depends on external network services. Software updates to give the system the promised functionality have been slow in coming. Only a few weeks battery life with very difficult to remove cover to replace batteries, so external power is required. Given external power, a Raspberry Pi is much more powerful, open to anything you want to do, and much less expensive.
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|Bait ‘n Switch…,
I saw the Twine written up in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago and signed up to buy one for $99. I was planning to use it to remotely monitor the temperature in another house. In December I got an email saying that they were shipping, and instructing me to follow some steps to complete the order. It also stated the price was $125. I was puzzled, and looked back at my original reservation email and it clearly said $99. An email to the company generated an interesting response — they had underpriced it, so they were not able to ship at the agreed upon price. I replied that it would have been nice (and ethical) to have mentioned this in the email that actually asked for my money. And, I also supposed that they generated a heck of a lot of pre-orders from the same WSJ article that I saw — and that prominently stated the $99 price point. I just don’t like being BS’d.
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