With new generations of iPhones and iPads emerging year after year, chances are your old devices are collecting dust on a shelf or in box stashed away in the closet.
But what if you could turn these old devices into something useful, like a home monitoring and control system? Sure, you're probably thinking that would be too expensive, but a new application attempts to do this without costing you a penny.
People Power Presence is a free service that users can install on both their old and new iPhones and iPads, and will enable the old device to stream video and sound, within the home or anywhere in the world, to the new device over a 3G or 4G wireless connection.
In order for this to work, the old device only needs a wireless connection, not a cellular or data plan.
The new app will be able to detect motion in a designated area and send data to users based on specific circumstances. For example, if a parent is held up at his or her job and wanted to know if his or her child got home from school okay, they can point their old smartphone at the front door and be alerted on their new phone when the door opens or if the door does not open by a certain time.
The application also seeks to speed up the implementation of the “Internet of Things” movement, in which countless devices such as power strips, thermostats, energy meters, locks and light switches will be controlled and managed solely over the Internet.
"The necessity to buy special hardware and the complexity of setting things up has delayed adoption of the Internet of Things," Gene Wang, CEO at People Power, said in a statement. "We will speed adoption by pressing into service millions of old but still [existing] smartphones to create a no-cost solution that starts small but easily expands to ultimately control many devices in the home. And People Power Presence is so supremely simple to use and setup that any smartphone user can do it on their own in minutes."
While the People Power Presence app for iPhones and iPads is still in the beta phase, individuals can test it out by signing up at peoplepowerpresence.com. The completed version for Apple devices, as well as an Android version, is expected to be available later in the year.
Edited by
Braden Becker
