Keeping an eye on a loved one in need
wireless systems
I get ornery when anyone suggests that people should be willing to place themselves under surveillance to avoid being locked up.
But that is what the proponents of "aging in place" are hoping for: that the old-old, those with one foot in the nursing home and the other on a banana peel, will gladly exchange their privacy for the chance to remain at home, where they can enjoy a better life.
The good news about one new home-surveillance product, the Vue Personal Video Network, is that our elders and their caregivers can control who sees the action inside their homes.
Vue is a wireless camera system that captures the action around the house, wherever you fear that folks - young or old - might get into trouble.
The Vue system has a Flash interface that you use to control (via a Web browser on your PC, or your smart phone) its individual camera feeds, and to schedule when each of the battery-operated Vue cameras switches on and off.
Vue uses its own mesh-networking technology, FrameMesh, created by the system's manufacturer, Avaak Inc. FrameMesh transmissions are encrypted to protect Vue customers, according to Avaak.
The Vue package, available this summer at www.vuezone.com, includes two cameras and a wireless gateway device that plugs into your home network router, or broadband modem. The cost of the package is about $300.
Each Vue camera measures about 3 x 2 x 1 inches, and is held by a magnet to a peel-and-stick base. Each resembles one of the infrared Virtual Wall devices that keep the Roomba vacuum from wandering into another room.
A Vue camera's wireless range (to the Vue gateway) is about 100 to 300 feet. You can extend that camera's transmission range, with wireless repeater devices, up to 900 feet. The FrameMesh network also accommodates up to 50 cameras, so no breakfast nook, toilet, or basement workshop need go unmonitored.
Technology and personal data
Cash, credit card, or driver's license?
Here's an idea guaranteed to shock any Libertarian or Electronic Freedom Foundation member: using your driver's license to pay for everything from groceries to gym memberships.Intellicheck Mobilisa (www.icmobil.com) has concocted a system, ID-Check, to replace our many credit and customer loyalty cards with a single, government-issued ID, such as the Homeland Security-mandated Real ID driver's license.
Intellicheck Mobilisa already sells software that checks the authenticity of government-issued ID cards on military bases and compares the names on those cards against more than 100 of what the company calls "bad guy" watch lists.
Payment devices at retail checkout counters could similarly verify the data stored in the magnetic stripes and barcodes on shopper's driver's licenses, according to Intellicheck Mobilisa.
ID-Check could then tap credit card and customer loyalty account records and issue instant credit approvals, or verify the age of someone trying to buy booze.
The company's identity verification software, already used by Toys 'R' Us and Foxwoods Resorts and Casino, among others, can also process RFID data.
ID-Check may prevent fraudulent returns and other rip-offs.
But the technology companies will have a hard time persuading consumers that using one card for everything is in our best interests. As much as we might moan about all of those cards in our wallets, giving them up will mean trusting a single server to charge the right amounts, to the right accounts - securely - every time. 