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Comment by barbazoo | Hacker News Reader

The only real practical example is fall detection, what's the real purpose of this?

Mass surveillance. Only through warrants, of course.

Or, you know, if a cop wants to stalk their ex-gf, or an isp tech support nerd wants to stalk a customer. Or any script kiddie or petty criminal can get hold of your wifi password or drop his own AP in your house.

Nothing to see here. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

I worked briefly for a company working on WiFi sensing, and besides fall detection, nobody could give a compelling use case.

When pressed to come up with a motivating vision, the big idea was lights turning on automatically when you enter a room.

I guess? Like a lot of R&D, it seemed a solution in search of a problem.

They've been making that tech for years, every office and school classroom I've been to in the last 10 years has that now. This is just another stupid shot in the dark. Maybe someday someone will actually find a useful purpose. We are limited by what we can't even imagine so there's always hope but until then, I'll let those with deep pockets spend the energy trying to find a good use for it.

> lights turning on automatically when you enter a room

Was this really it? Or did they have some use-case not currently covered by motion sensors?

I can see some potential use for security (cheap REX sensors can be easily tricked, allowing unauthorized access into secure areas). The fix is obvious (stop cheaping out on your REX sensors) but I can envision someone trying to bill wifi sensing as the hip new solution for REX systems.

Yeah seemed like a replacement for other motion sensing... but then how localized can this actually be?

I've long had an obsession with energy savings and heating, and I think the best way to save energy on heating is by heating people instead of building. With accurate person detection in a room, you could shine low intensity IR at their exact position to keep them warm without wasting energy on heating the rest of the room.

But yeah, I think we can all expect this will be used to monitor behaviour in stores, to spy on people in homes, to rob us and to throw more "relevant" advertising in our faces.

>"you could shine low intensity IR at their exact position to keep them warm without wasting energy on heating the rest of the room."

brings new meaning to beam forming! I like it.

> The only real practical example is fall detection, what's the real purpose of this?

I can think of few real world applications. Eg. I have autism and air filter. Air filter working on full power is very uncomfortable for me, but with position sensing, it can be configured to run more often when I'm not in room. Motion sensing isn't exactly a solution, because I can be very still.

Automated light management is sensible too. It can also be used to automatically turn off lights if I fall asleep.

That sounds useful in your case, thanks for sharing.

A lot of the active research in this area was military funded.

I am sure the invisible hand of the market will make sure it's put to best possible use :)

Kept a lot of smart students busy

Saving lives isn't good enough for you?

This gave me 'think of the children' gaslighting vibes.

Then make a dedicated fall detector and sell it to the elderly. They already make wrist bands with panic buttons that phone for help, put the sensor in the phone hub just in case they fall and lose consciousness.

Check if anyone is home before a robery ?

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