How an #IoT device, a @Dropcam, saved my job!
As gadget geek & technology evangelist I am always an early adopter and after replacing my old “baby monitors” with wifi enable @Dropcams my ROI was almost instantaneous!
Since I was in high school I have always been fascinated by gadgets and technology and took pride in being an early adopter of everything from iPhones to AIM to Myspace. See my other post
(Thank You, Steve Jobs, for Making Software Geeks Cool)
So as you can imagine my wife of 10 years has been forced to embrace many gadgets and apps that seemed cool or never worked or because I was an early adopter never really worked.
I have been blessed with two daughters & a third due this month & although my oldest is only 4 the change in technology has been drastic in those 4 years.
As we were preparing the house for the arrival of our 3rd child making it 3 under 4 years old I was in desperate need to upgrade the out of date baby monitor. While researching camera’s I came across the @dropcam site & previously I had researched real surveillance cameras but the wiring and amount of support equipment needed turned me off even as a gadget geek. After coming across @dropcam I read some of the reviews and was following them on Twitter but wasn’t sold on the functionality and iPhone app satisfying my needs.
After much research and back and forth I cam across a tweet about @dropcam now having a new HD version and it was enough for me to pull the trigger.
I decided to buy 1 and test it out while we were still using our existing baby monitor. We installed it in my oldest daughters room and I installed the apps on my wife's phone and mine. One of the features we liked the most was the ability to view on our iPhones from anywhere and also the two way communication as my brother lives next door to our house and if we wanted to communicate with our kids through the camera this would be very handy.
After using the @dropcam for about a week we were confident we were going to go ahead and pull the trigger for 2 more to cover all of the kids rooms.
So how did this @dropcam save my job?
Ok save my job might be a little strong but it prevented me from missing an extremely important meeting with a customer that was in from out of town and if I did miss that meeting I guess I might have lost my job.
As I said earlier my wife has been forced to deal with my technology and gadgets and over the years has become pretty tech savvy herself for being a high school history teacher.
My wife teaches zero hour (yes they have such a thing) at her high school which starts at 6am so she is out of the house before I get up in the morning and get our daughters ready for daycare. On this day I had a very important meeting at 8am near my office which would require me to be up by 6 and have the girls to daycare in time for me to make the commute. My wife knew it was an important morning from me and because of my social media and addiction to being connected it was not normal from her not to hear from me before 6am when she would start teaching.
My wife decided to call my iPhone and then text to make sure I was awake. Because the idea of a house phone is stupid in my book this was the only way she could get ahold of me. Since my iPhone is my alarm I had apparently taken my phone and placed it under my pillow and didn’t hear my wife trying to get ahold of me. She decided that she would pull up her dropcam app to make sure the girls were out of their beds and maybe I didn’t have my phone one me or the battery was dead.
When my wife pulled up the camera on her phone to her surprise my daughter was still sound asleep in bed…. She was now worried about me not making my meeting and wasn’t sure why I wasn't picking up my phone.
Just before her class started it hit her that she could message my daughter on the @dropcam to wake up. She then said while standing in her high school classroom about to teach:
“Chloe, You need to get up and go into Mommy & Daddy’s room and wake Daddy up as he slept in!”
My oldest daughter is an easy-going kid and not only is she smart but she loves technology and wasn’t thrown off at all by the camera having a voice. My daughter flung open my bedroom door and said:
“Daddy wake up! Mommy told me to get you up from the camera!”
As you can imagine this was extremely confusing for me springing out of bed hearing this from my daughter knowing my wife should already be at school teaching. I pulled up my phone and saw the missed calls and texts and ask my daughter
“Is Mommy in your room?” she looked at me a laughed and said “No Silly Goose Mommy talked through the camera!”
With that this geeky husband smiled ear to ear not only impressed that my wife thought of me and my meeting but she came up with the idea of using the @Dropcam to get my daughter up to wake me up! Major tech brownie points were awarded to my wife & thankfully I was able to get out of the house and make my meeting in time.
As a technology evangelist I always preach embracing technology & not being afraid to #ThinkDifferent & in this case my wife did both, Thankfully for me!
—-If you enjoyed my story I would really appreciate you selecting “Recommend below & leaving a comment” Thanks Brian
