Qualcomm's Wi-Fi coffee maker may be the next big thing that you didn't know you needed.
Do you like drinking coffee, but hate the onerous, labor-intensive task of brewing coffee? Who wants to waste time loading grounds, a filter and some water into your coffee maker, only to have to wait around while it brews? Or worse, you go do something else while waiting, only to forget about the fresh joe sitting in the pot.
We've sent men to the moon and sequenced the human genome, but we still need to go check on brewing coffee? Luckily, Qualcomm's booth at Mobile World Congress has a promising new concept to solve this problem.
Qualcomm rigged a coffee maker with an Antheros 4100 chip that syncs the machine with a mobile device, reports CNET. Using an Android-powered tablet, Qualcomm waves the tablet's camera in front of the coffee machine until it recognizes the device. Once it recognizes the coffee maker, the tablet fires up a "coffeepot" app that lets you control the strength and size of your coffee, as well as when to brew it.
When your coffee is done, the chip-enabled coffee machine sends a notification to the tablet, alerting you that your coffee is done. At Qualcomm's demonstration, a second tablet served this function, this one running Windows 8. The system can accommodate multiple mobile devices, so you can be sure when your coffee is done whether you're on the couch with your tablet, sitting at your computer or anywhere with your smartphone. Or you can just, you know, walk into your kitchen.
Unfortunately, Qualcomm's Wi-Fi coffeemaker won't be available for sale anytime soon. The system is more of a demonstration of multiple Qualcomm platforms. The coffee maker showcases just how much you can do with its chips in basic household appliances and gadgets. The coffee machine system uses Qualcomm's open-source Alljoyn platform, that the company says will be shipped with multiple chips. The MWC booth had a number of these hacked household gadgets, such as an alarm clock and a system to set up your tablet as a TV remote.
