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The Internet of Things comes to vacuum cleaners at CES

The Internet of Things was big at CES this year so we went looking for appliance manufacturers that had incorporated a dust sensor (and Internet connection!) into their appliances.

We’re apparently a little ahead bit of the pack on this, as most exhibitors in this space weren’t quite thinking along these lines yet. (There were “smart vent hoods” that might, or might not, incorporate a dust sensor. These allow restaurants to save energy, and we might do a future post on them [updated: link].)

One company that was thinking along these lines was Moneual, that makes a robotic vacuum competitor to the iRobot Roomba that we review below.

The exhibit heavily touted that the Moneual was “a hybrid” dry and mop robotic vacuum. This is a brilliant marketing move, and it makes sense that the same robot vacuum should be able to also mop. (If you wanted both functionalities from iRobot you’d have to buy two separate robots.) That being said, it looks like the mop is just an attachment that was added, perhaps almost as an afterthought.

Where Moneual has innovated is in the addition of an iPhone app that will report how much dirt the Moneual has picked up on each cleaning. This will let you optimize your cleaning schedule. No doubt iRobot will be adding a feature like this (and an Internet connection) to their robots in the future. (It looks like this is a new feature that Moneual announced at CES; the iPhone app does not appear available for the Moneual model available off Amazon.)

New vacuums with Airborne Dust Sensors demonstrated at CES

What got our attention is the airborne dust sensor (shown in the photo; also not yet available in the model on Amazon). This ranks airborne dust on a proprietary scale from 1-99, and, according to the Moneual rep we spoke with at CES, will turn on the vacuum if the air becomes to dusty.

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