I would have put this up for Xmas if I'd thought of it.
I'm not much of a gadget person. I like them if they're truly useful but most aren't. They seem like they either solve problems that don't exist or they do something that's done just as easily by something more convenient, like a pocket knife.
That said, here are some things that I want. If they already exist, I haven't seen them.
- A Post-it Note pad with a magnet glued on the back that I can stick on the refrigerator door. I've got several note pads scattered about the house and I can never find one when I want it. Even keeping one in a kitchen drawer doesn't work. They move and hide faster than cockroaches.
A remote garage door lock. When I was a kid, I lived in a neighborhood where most people didn't have automatic openers, so garage doors were locked (usually with a padlock). These days I doubt anyone can even imagine a door without a Genie. But that also means the locks have disappeared.
The only thing keeping people out of garages now is trying to lift the door that's being held down by the automatic door opener (assuming that another garage access door, if there is one, is properly secured). If you can overcome the door opener, or better yet, trick the door opener into opening the door for you, then you're golden. Since many of us have keypads located mounted outside where anybody can walk up and try their hand at codebreaker, this makes me nervous.
When I'm gone overnight or longer, I can lock the door in place so it physically can't move. But it's too inconvenient to use for shorter trips away (like to work or the store) or even overnight.
What I want is a remotely controlled lock, something a burglar wouldn't know about, that would have to unlock first before the door opener would run. It would run independently of the regular remote so that even if someone stole my remote or broke my keypad code, he still couldn't get in.
Stick-on wireless cameras. Make magazine ran an article or two about people who would take an LED, solder it on onto a calculator battery and a small magnet and make these little lights that could be tossed and stick on various thing (i.e. anything that a magnet would stick to). LEDs and batteries are cheap, so once they die, no big deal.
I want a wireless camera that works the same way. It's very small, runs for a reasonable amount of time on a battery, and has a magnet. You stick it on something, "tune" to its channel, and you have wireless surveilance. I'd love to stick these on various parts of my house.
These things probably already exist and I don't know about it. Okay—put that on an infomercial that runs 25 times a day.
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