If only making ourselves smarter were as easy as making your whole house smarter, we’d all be geniuses by now. Alas, such technology does not yet exist, but in the meantime, you can turn your home into a smart home with Mesh, the DIY smart home kit. If you’re looking for a way to bring the Internet of Things into your household, this may just be the answer — this set of small, wireless tags attach to just about any household object, connecting your own piece of the world with the world at large becomes pretty easy.
With functions ranging from motion sensing to brightness sensing to temperature and humidity monitoring, Mesh tags can be placed on any physical object, turning it into a connected device. There’s no need for any additional electronics or programming know-how — everything is self-contained within the Mesh app, which lets you connect tags to internet services and wireless devices.
To set up a connected home via Mesh, simply choose the tag you need for the task (there are seven in all), move it into the app’s sandbox, and assign it a task or connect it to another device. You could remotely control your iPhone’s camera, or dim the kitchen lights from your living room. Really, your home becomes your (connected) oyster.
In explaining his motivation for designing the tags, Mesh creator Takehiro Hagiwara told Wired that he came up with the idea after hitting snooze on his alarm clock one too many times. “One day I thought, ‘What if I could relocate just the snooze button to the bathroom?’ That way I would definitely have to get out of bed,” he said.
From there, he wanted to create a system that would be easily accessible to a wide range of consumers, regardless of technical ability. “It’s easy for anyone to craft something with paper or clay, but when it comes to making electronics, it can be tough because people need to know circuits and programming,” he added.
The Mesh kit will set you back $190 for four tags, and you can buy tags individually for $60.
