Mother - Home & Life Sensor System

I don't know about the name "Mother." This home and life sensor system's creators say they chose it because Mother takes care us. Our safety, our fitness. Our comfort and joy. She makes our lives "serene, healthy and pleasurable." But, uh, she does it by monitoring, recording, and developing online data spreadsheets of our every move. So calling her "Mother" makes the system seem kind of...nosy. Overbearing. In need of some tools to cut the cord.

And Mother's creepy execution doesn't help matters. Check out the Weeble/matryoshka doll apparatus playing the titular role. It looks like it might use its glowing blue eyes to burn a hole through my brain while I sleep. Mother, is that you? Wha-...what's going on? What are you...Mother! Mother, no! Noooooo!

But aside from that, cool product with a lot of promise, and a terrific addition to the 2014 International CES, a consumer electronics and consumer technology tradeshow that takes place in Las Vegas every January. (Check out Mother at CES in the video above.)

The Mother base functions in conjunction with a family of connected sensors called Motion Cookies. Motion Cookies attach to home and lifestyle objects--or people--to detect and understand their movements, temperatures, and proximity to Mother. Possible objects include keys, doors, toothbrushes, pill bottles, water bottles, anything a user wants to track and fold into Mother's online data analysis system. The Cookies send the information they gather to the WiFi-enabled Mother base, and from there users can funnel the data into a host of Mother apps to expound its meaning.

For example, place a Motion Cookie on a toothbrush, and it will note how often and how long the toothbrush is used. Export this information to Mother's toothbrushing app, and get an instant overview of the family's oral hygiene. Do the same to track water, coffee, or ice cream consumption. Cookies' motion detection can also alert users of an intruder, tell them a snooper has touched or moved something off-limits, or reassure them their children have gotten home from school safely; the tags constantly signal their perturbance and presence in the vicinity of a Mother. Their thermometers, which perpetually gauge the ambient temperature, can provide services such as alerting users to an oven left on or a fire since they are also equipped to send notifications to phones or tablets when an abnormal change occurs.

Mother functions with iPhone, iPad, and Android 4.0 and up, plus any computer with a recent version of a major browser. At printing, the system was available for pre-order, with a Spring 2014 anticipated delivery date. Each package includes 1 Mother and 4 Motion Cookies. Read more about Mother and her life-minding and lifestyle-enhancing capabilities on the Sen.se Website.