Home automation · ongoing · In progress

A house that runs on NFC tags.

My household is full of neurospicy humans, which means we have a whole lot of superpowers but also some short comes.

For example, we can plan and execute evacuating my mom from Odesa, Ukraine and bring her to Bucharest, Romania within 48 hours of full scale invasion. And then within another 4 days bring her to Toronto, ON. But for the life of us, we can’t remember if we fed cats.

I know, ridiculous.

This is where automation comes in.

I decided to go ahead and create NFC tags all around our house for things that we need help with.

Did we feed our two cats and two dogs?

Two meme NFC tags on a corkboard: a buff Doge labelled Dog was fed, and the woman-yelling-at-cat meme labelled I fed the cat.
  • At home we have 2 cats and 2 dogs, and they all need to be fed 2x a day. That’s 8 feedings everyday, a lot to remember.
  • At 8 AM & 7 PM my husband and I both get a remind to feed the animals IF one or both NFC tags was not scanned before hand.
  • Additionally, if you scan NFC tag randomly - it will tell you if it was activated already or not.
  • Of course I had to add meme’s to the NFC tags

Laundry reminders

Laundry is on NFC tag on the washer: the distracted-boyfriend meme.Laundry has been flipped NFC tag on the dryer: a smiling retro housewife.
  • With 4 humans living at home, we have loads of laundry. Another thing that is tough to keep up.
  • When we start laundry, we always forget to flip it. As a result, it often ends up sitting for hours and eventually gaining that wonderful wet smell. This is why I’ve added NFC tag that we scan when we put a new load it. Alarm goes off in an hour to remind us to flip the laundry.
  • When we start the dryer, similar but not as a bad as we don’t get the wet smell. Instead we get wrinkles that are hard to get out without ironing your clothes. So once again, when we scan it, alarm goes off in 1.5 hours to remind us to take out the clothes.
  • If we haven’t scanned either one of the tags in 3 days, we get a gentle reminder to do our laundry.

Two freezers + fridge + pantry inventory

Upstairs freezer NFC tag: a mad-scientist meme above a small whiteboard and marker.
  • Due to scarcity I grew up when it comes to food, I now overpack our fridge + pantry + both freezers. It is a bit much, and I am actively working on it. As a result, no matter how much food we have and how well it is organized, it is hard to remember what we have.
  • NFC tags helps us see exactly what we have in the fridge, pantry, and both freezers.
  • It also allows us to easily see what we have at home when we’re grocery shopping and update inventory as you go.
I am hungry, send help NFC tag: a screaming raccoon meme.

What to eat?

  • When it comes to figuring out what to eat….we get paralyzed. Even though we have any options.
  • Now we have NFC tag that can give you suggestions on what to eat based on our inventory.