The relayr team wants you to connect anything in your house to the internet, and their WunderBar kit can help. The product contains six sensors, a Cortex M0 Processor and tools for users to develop apps for anything. The project is currently being crowdfunded through a Dragon Innovation campaign.
The kit will allow you to speak to the sensors via wifi or Bluetooth low energy, and the open source SDK works with iOS, Android and Node.js. The company's own REST API allows users to easily create applications through the preprogrammed sensor functions.
http://www.dragoninnovation.com/projects/35-wunderbar-by-relayr
Each of the sensors have their own battery, a push button and LED lights to provide maximum flexibility for programming and usage. Current sensors are a light / color / proximity sensor, a humidity / temperature sensor, an accelerometer / gyroscope sensor, and an infrared transmitter. Two of the six sensors will be decided on by the public, one voted on through the crowdsourcing website and one voted on by the project backers.
Examples in the video are a temperature sensor to alert you that your beer is getting warm, a proximity sensor to figure out which coworker is stealing your cookies, and controlling your home entertainment sensor from afar with the infrared transmitter.
The crowning achievement of our sensor-rich future, however, shows a temperature sensor in a baby's diaper that will alert parents when the time is right for a diaper change. Temperature sensors will be publicly accessible so that every WunderBar user can access the temperature data of every other user.
WunderBar has a chocolate bar packaging and theme, with plans to release the casing design to Kickstarter to allow users to customize their housings and sensors. I have to admit, though, that the mechanical engineer in me winces every time the video demonstrates someone breaking off a chocolate shaped chunk of circuitboard.
With a growing number of sensor kits for connected living coming to market, products will need to differentiate themselves from the pack to be succssful. Wunderbar concentrates on individualized usage for the sensors and an easy to use open source development kit.
http://www.dragoninnovation.com/projects/35-wunderbar-by-relayr