Mother welcomes developers into her creepy connected world
It's often said that "mother knows best," but sometimes, even mothers need council. Alright, so perhaps that's not true for tough, human matriarchs, but it does apply to Mother: the creepy-looking, internet-connected hub that's intended to make your dumb home smarter. You see, Mother communicates with small, multipurpose sensors called "Cookies," and instructs them to monitor one thing or another and report back, so it in turn can relay data and notifications back to you. Sense, the company behind Mother, has come up with various uses for Cookies, such as monitoring steps or sleep, but now it's seeking external inspiration. That's why, next month, it's launching a public API so developers can start dreaming up all kinds of new applications for the sensors. They'll also be able to plug data from Cookies into other apps and platforms -- your step count from a pedometer Cookie could be fed into a third-party fitness app, for example.
In addition to the public API, Sense is cracking open the Mother platform as a whole, so its hardware can start communicating with other connected devices in your home, like a smart thermostat or power outlet. And to make exploring ideas as simple as possible, a Sense channel will be added to the IFTTT web-based automation service. Sense hasn't just decided to sit back and let everyone else do the work, though. The company plans to release a few more Cookie "apps" of its own over the next few months. They aren't revolutionary, mind, with the consumer having to make the final, imaginative connection between basic programmed instruction and real-world use case. Time for you devs to start cooking up something more exciting.
