By Mike Langberg, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Apr. 3--My daughter Sara, like many 5-year-olds, often forgets to wash her hands after going to the bathroom.

Don't laugh, but this is a problem that will be solved by the Internet.

In bathrooms of the near future, sensors in the toilet and the sink will talk to each other through a home network. That network in turn will be linked to the Internet.

When the toilet is flushed and the water faucets aren't used, Mom and Dad will get an e-mail, or perhaps a text-message alert on their cell phones.

Welcome to the Internet of Things.

The Internet today is mostly about connecting people to each other through computers, for exchanging messages, sharing Web pages or downloading music and video.

The Internet of Things, a term coined in part by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, goes beyond digital information to connect with the physical world through inexpensive sensors and controllers.

After many years of pie-in-the-sky dreams, the Internet of Things has reached an inflection point where practical real-world solutions are arriving on the market.

One place where the Internet of Things is happening now, all giggling aside, is the public restroom.

Adobe Systems will start a test by late April of i-Lav, a package of sensors and software from Cognos Systems of Irvine.

On the sixth floor of the West Tower at Adobe's headquarters in downtown San Jose, two men's rooms and two women's rooms will be equipped with tiny wireless sensors in all the paper towel, soap and deodorizer dispensers.

These sensors will send alerts through the building's data network when supplies are running low. An order to replenish an individual dispenser will go to the maintenance staff by e-mail, pager alert or cell-phone message.

"The equipment will write its own work order," says George Denise, who works for the real estate management firm Cushman & Wakefield as general manager of the Adobe complex.

Cognos is also working on sensors for toilets and sinks to measure water flow. These sensors could flag toilets using excess water because of worn valves and sinks that are overflowing.

Denise hopes to eventually put Cognos sensors in all Adobe restrooms. He figures the system will pay for itself by reducing the number of hours that janitors spend maintaining restrooms. Restroom patrons will also have fewer of those inconvenient moments when they find out -- too late -- that there's no soap or paper towels.

If the system is expanded to sinks and toilets, there could be further cost savings and environmental benefits in reduced water usage.

Cognos is also tackling the problem of hand-washing among workers at restaurants, food production plants and hospitals. In all these settings, frequent hand-washing is crucial to preventing the spread of disease.

Its i-Hygiene system, now in testing, consists of a wireless sensor for commercial soap dispensers that counts how many times the dispenser is used and communicates that information through a network.

A safety supervisor for a restaurant chain can then monitor hand-washing trends over time and across multiple locations.

If Restaurant A shows a decline in soap-dispenser usage, when employment and sales volume are constant, the supervisor can alert that restaurant's manager.

If Restaurant B shows less hand-washing than restaurant C and D, when all three are equivalent in employees and sales, the supervisor can again send out an alert.

This may seem intrusive, but anyone who's spent a day sick in bed after a contaminated restaurant meal will surely appreciate such a system.

The Internet of Things will create many such small but revolutionary changes -- changes that will be largely invisible to the people who benefit from them.

Crossbow Technology of San Jose, for example, has developed low-cost wireless sensors for Life Fitness, the leading manufacturer of treadmills and exercise bikes.

Members of gyms using the system can create a personal fitness plan on the Web, and that plan will be communicated to each exercise machine they use. A treadmill, for example, would be automatically set to the time and difficulty level you've previously selected. The system even tracks how much exercising you've done.

Gym owners also get to monitor the varying rates of usage on individual machines and rotate them around the gym floor to avoid early maintenance on over-used machines.

Sun Microsystems of Santa Clara and its partners have developed a system for the Orthopedic Hospital of Oklahoma in Tulsa that puts wireless radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags into patient wristbands. The wristbands help make sure patients get the proper treatment and medications, and can alert hospital staff if disoriented patients leave their rooms.

Eventually, in perhaps five to 10 years, the technology behind the Internet of Things will be cheap enough for home use.

The refrigerator you bought from Sears, for example, might send a message back to the store saying its coolant level is low. This causes the refrigerator's motor to run more often, pushing up your electricity bill. You would get a call from Sears offering to fix the problem, which you didn't know you had.

You'll also get sensors in sinks and toilets to hold down your water bill and prevent damage from overflows. As a side benefit, the parents of tomorrow's 5-year-olds will get those "failure to wash hands" alerts.

Contact Mike Langberg at mike@langberg.com or (408) 920-5084. Past columns may be read at www.langberg.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

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