Robostir

Robostir
I’m going to take a risk here. It’s hard to be public about a thing like this. But today my Robo Stir arrived! You can see the video at www.robostir.com.

This is one of the coolest gizmos you’ll ever see on a TV Infomercial. Just plop it into a pot of beans or soup and It’ll stir for up to 4 hours! It really does give you an extra hand in the kitchen. Discerning consumers like me recognize a good buy when we see one.

Now I know that a whole bunch of people all over the country are going to laugh at me. I can see Phil Marshall in Illinois, Emily Ward in Detroit, Jenna Bakeroot in Traverse City and Carl Henning in Phoenix all thinking I’ve really lost it but there’s a point to all this!

Tell ME. What makes this such a great device?

The answers easy. It’s a single purpose. Easy to explain to someone who doesn’t know what it is. There’s nothing to do but turn it on and stick it in the pot. That’s a lot better than my Cuisinart or my Pasta Maker. With my Cuisinart I’m always looking for the right tool. I always get the book out to check this or that. And the Cuisinart is a pain to clean up. I’d use it a lot more to chop cheese but it’s just as much effort to do it by hand when you figure the cleanup in. [Bet you didn’t know that the Dr. of Industrial Networking was so handy around the kitchen.]

The Robo Stir is exactly what we’re trying to achieve with our product line. Let’s take our Modbus RTU to BACnet IP module. That guy moves Modbus RTU data to a BACnet IP Client device. It’s pretty popular device for our Building Automation customers.

What’s good about it? IT’S A ROBO STIR! It’s single purpose. It just moves RTU data from a Modbus RTU device into a BACnet IP Client like JCI’s Metasys. And data from Metasys out to the RTU device. Not hard to explain. It doesn’t have any other function. You can’t configure it to send you an email. You can’t do trend analysis on the temperature in the steam room or turn off the light in your daughter’s bedroom from your Blackberry.

And because it’s so simple to use it’s real easy to configure. There’s a built in browser interface. So you just go to the IP address of the device and wammo there’s the configuration page. You’ll need to know a few things about the Modbus device list and the IP address you want to set it to and your done. Not quite as simple as dropping it in the pan but pretty simple as automation devices go.

You’ll be surprised by this but most of our customers never read the manual. They just give it a go on a wing and a prayer. Well, that’s the kind of customer we cater too. The guy that has so much to get done it doesn’t have time to figure it all out by reading the manual.  And with the way our skilled Engineering team (I’m hoping they read this) has crafted the product most people can get by without reading the manual.

So, I’m heading back to the stove. Unfortunately the Robo Stir won’t add the rest of the ingredients to the sauce I’m making…