Peanut by Sen.se – product review |CES2017

app reviews CES Product Reviews

Sen.se sent over two of their four peanuts, the ThermoPeanut and GuardPeanut. The name simply comes from the shape and look of the Bluetooth device. All of the Sense Peanut devices are made to be simple to use and also utilize the same application giving you a single dashboard to work with any variation.  You also have nine Peanut colors to choose from, all under $30 USD.

Each Peanut is thin in height and Bluetooth connected to your device. So a device being in range to collect data or get alerts for any of them is important. Each Peanut can also make audible noises and alerts on their own giving them some independence if you leave range. That is especially important on the GuardPeanut.

A Peanut can store data for up to 15 days, but you can have multiple devices sharing a login collecting data. You can have as many Peanuts collecting data in the application, but the device you choose will dictate how many it can collect from at once. Each Peanut comes with a clip holder, ring and some sticky tape for carrying and placement options.

ThermoPeanut by Sen.se

I unpacked ThermoPeanut, in the color red, and quickly had it set up. The application called SensePeanut, I used the Android version, made it easy to add a new Peanut with screens showing me to pull the battery protection out to activate it. A scan was done finding the ThermoPeanut in seconds. The application instantly knew the function type and color of the Peanut but allowed me to rename it.

The ThermoPeanut is meant to be placed anywhere you want to keep track of temperature and have it send alerts based on temp or just log it for you. Keep in mind the Peanuts are not waterproof and should not get wet. Important is you plan on checking external temperatures or near water pipes that could freeze and burst.

While I never know what is more accurate, the Nest, ThermoPeanut or just a standalone thermometer I have, they all are pretty close which has me presume the ThermoPeanut does a good job.  Alerts for both high and low temps can be set on the Peanut and the mobile device.

The main view had the current temperature, lowest and highest then charts for the last 24 hours/30 days/12 months.  An average also shows below each chart. You can quickly check the temp between polling times, that you can change, with a click of the thermometer symbol in the corner.

ThermoPeanut had quite a few customizations including offsetting the temp, Celsius and Fahrenheit, polling and notification intervals and IFTTT integration. IFTTT integration is quite cool if you want  recipe that maybe kicks the Nest off if it gets too low or high.  However Nest already has that built in in Eco mode so I am not sure where I would use it yet in a recipe.

GuardPeanut by Sen.seGuardPeanut has quite a few more features just due to it’s task. This Peanut is made to notify you of movement or range of the Peanut.

Think about hooking this to your laptop or bike when you park it. If either is moved the Peanut can omit a loud tone alerting those nearby. It can also kick off a notice on your connected device.  The graph shows when it was moved and how often.

Alerts on the GuardPeanut can be set with three tone styles of continuous loud, short discreet or long and loud. You can customize the smartphone alert as well. Sensitivity defaults to normal but has six levels of very low to very high.  Alerts themselves can expire from 3 minutes up to never. I preferred one hour.

Charts are much like ThermoPeanut except the weekly one is sideways instead of across.  Which  was odd but gave the same data points.  Today, week and last 3o days.  No year view was available.

Enabling and disabling monitoring and alerting was a simple click on the application, or the button on the Peanut if your device is not handy. I played with the sensitivity and alarm levels quite a bit. Depending on what you choose it is easy to find the right setting for whatever you want to guard. From an accidental bump not setting it off to barely a movement making it shriek, I did it all.

Summary

I wish I had the chance to test and play with all the Sen.se Peanut types (MedPeanut and SleepPeanut coming soon). I can see where having these inexpensive Bluetooth devices that have specific tasks has great opportunity and benefit.  I can see many uses for these and also many more Peanut ideas coming.

Look at how Amazon made dots for ordering supplies, these will soon be all over the place and work better with IFTTT.  The SleepPeanut could sense you are awake, send a recipe to IFTTT to turn on your LIFX lights, turn the heat up downstairs and even start the coffee. The ideas are endless.

What are the downfalls I found? A handful came to mind after a week of testing:

  • The ability to customize graphs for the ThermoPeanut
  • Waterproofing option (at high cost likely) of ThermoPeanut
  • Lower battery usage. There are too many web complaints on quick battery usage in Peanuts
  • A better understanding of how to use the button on the top of each Peanut. The guide said it was configurable, however neither ThermoPeanut or GuardPeanut had any config options
  • Allow me to group Peanuts, not just a scrolling list. What is I have a bunch of ThermoPeanuts or GuardPeanuts? I may want some form of global alerting to be assigned
  • Also let me group Peanuts by color or sort the main screen list somehow as it grows and I add Peanuts
  • The Add a Peanut link in the app should be in the upper right as well since the list can get long on the main screen
  • I found out I could see the battery indicator for the Peanut and the signal range by clicking the giant circle when in each one. I had no idea and that was on accident.

You can get the ThermoPeanut on Amazon (affiliate link) and all of them on the Sen.se website, including pre orders for the new Peanut types.  We review a lot of Bluetooth trackers but these take dedicated function to new levels and show some creative thinking.