News - 2016042904 - Yes, someone made a smart clothes peg
It seems nothing is safe from the Internet of Things revolution. The latest attempt to make a household object smarter is Peggy, a connected clothes peg by Australian detergent brand OMO. A few basic components sit inside its orange shell, including a thermometer, UV sensor and humidity detector. These track the weather outside and, in the case of impending rain, trigger timely alerts to your phone over WiFi. So if the clouds roll in and you're busy with something else -- maybe you're out of the house, but someone else is indoors -- you won't be left with soggy washing.
It's a bit of a PR stunt. Most of this information could be obtained with a decent weather app or home weather station, after all. To sell the idea, OMO has developed some scheduling tools for the companion app which tell you the best time to put on a wash. Plug in the time it usually takes for your washing machine to complete a load, and it'll explain how many hours (or minutes, if you're unlucky) you'll have afterwards before the next downpour. It'll even send a notification when your washing machine is done, just in case you need an extra reminder to take out your digs.
OMO's Peggy is currently in testing -- if you're curious and live in Australia, you can submit your details to ensure you're "first in line" when it's actually available. Otherwise, you can do what homeowners have been doing for, well, centuries, and keep one eye on the sky when your washing is hanging outside. Inefficient maybe, but it does save managing yet another device that needs to be charged up and connected to the internet.
