The Egg Minder from GE does what your mama told you never to do, it counts your chickens before they hatch. This new product uses sensors and Wi-Fi connectivity to count how many eggs are currently in your refrigerator. It goes a step further by also telling users just how old the oldest rotten egg is in your collection. Using the companion Wink app on iOS, the Egg Minder can store information for up to 14 eggs and the information can be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection. This is obviously aimed at being able to assist with grocery shopping, seeing I can’t think of any other time you’d need to know how many eggs there are in your refrigerator.

Each egg slot has a LED light (ooh fancy!) and the Egg Minder is powered by 2 AA batteries. More information about the Egg Minder can be found on its Quirky page. Currently the Egg Minder is undergoing market research, asking interested people how much they’d be willing to pay for such a device. How much would you pay to have your chickens counted?

Home automation is a booming industry. Whether it’s climate control through the Nest thermostat, or Internet connected door locks like the Goji, humans are finding more and more ways to make even the most mundane household items smarter. This “Internet of Things” movement isn’t slowing down any time soon, and will essentially transform the way we live even more than we imagined when the first modern smartphone (the iPhone) arrived in 2007.

I can’t wait.