A typical geek tech enthusiast, like myself, may be a few years out of college but mentally convinced it was just yesterday they graduated. They are probably renting a place and are longing to buy their first home, not to settle down and live the dream, but just so that they have a reason to buy the Nest thermostat and the Goji Smart Lock.

Nest Thermostat

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Goji Smart Lock

Maybe the description above isn’t typical, and is just a description of how badly I want devices like these scattered around my home. I really do. As long as they are useful, connected and don’t need the batteries changing often (or ideally never). I remember my first wireless keyboard and mouse each needed their batteries changing every 4 to 5 weeks… was simply too annoying for me to live with and I went back to wired.

Well assuming power isn’t an issue, what types of devices do I want around my home to be connected?

I want my fridge and freezer to run on a version of Android and to be controlled from my phone or at least for me to view their status (temperature, capacity, times the doors were opened, inventory list, number of ice cubes available… ). I also want the washing machine and dryer to be connected and for me to be able to start a load remotely from my cell on my way home, so that the clothes can be washed and dried moments before I walk through the door. The lights should be controllable from my cell including the brightness, color and mood and everything electrical in the house from the oven to the toaster to the kettle should all be running software that allows me to access and operate them remotely.

Cameras are a given: lots of discrete cameras, with pan and tilt, hi-res, recording to a NAS (Network Access Storage). Plus when your door handles and thermostat cost you $1000 you probably need a decent home alarm system to protect your junk stuff.

What about the bathroom?

Well, ok – for starters, let’s put sensors in the taps and a simple display on the top of each that shows the actual temperature of the water that’s about to come out. Next let’s give remote access to control filling up the bathtub, dispensing the bubble bath, number of rubber duckies to release. How about a remote flush in case you want to play a trick on someone or if you later remember you forgot to flush.

In all my wild dreams about home automation, nothing could have prepared me for RollScout and its campaign on Kickstarter.

Can you guess what it is yet? Well the laser isn’t there to warm the toilet paper before you wipe. The RollScout is in fact an early warning system, just in case you were in the bathroom and didn’t notice the lack of paper, the RollScout will alert you by the way of its flashing ring of fire.

Don’t believe me? I plagiarized the following from RollScout’s FAQs:

But I can see the roll directly?

True. But are we always so vigilant? I think everyone has faced a situation where they were stuck in a bathroom with no paper despite all the seemingly obvious solutions.

RollScout forces you to look at the toilet paper roll because of its bright flashing light. Instead of checking it every time, you can rely on RollScout to do the checking for you unfalteringly.