I was watching an epidose of modern marvels called Star Trek tech. In the episode, they where discussing real life tricorders. They showed a professor who have made a device that instead of having internal sensors liek a real tricorder, it used data from in-place sensors like termostats etc to give a tricorder like interface to different recording devices around the lab.

So, i was thinking: this is (in theory) possible with the IT. of course it would requie a lot of hardware and programming, and I realize that and can settle on toying with the idea in my head, but still, imagine this:

You have a computer set up at home. the computer is tied into such devices as termostat (inside/outside, heck even the refrigerator), maybe detecting wifi signals contineousely, power consumption etc and at the same time be tied into media center control +++. The computer sends a combined report of all these interfaces to the IT which displays them as a tricorder. In theory its possible and of course a lot of this is available - just not in tricorder form.

Just a thought experiment, dont put too much into it