The Secret Genius of Modern Life episode 16 - Doorbell
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00:00Take one.
00:05Shall we?
00:06Take a minute.
00:08Look around you.
00:11You probably never think about it,
00:13but we are living in a time of incredible ingenuity.
00:17Our lives are filled with fiendishly clever bits of tech
00:20that basically make the modern world tick.
00:25The problem is, we're now so used to these devices
00:29that we have forgotten to remember how clever they are.
00:33I don't have an answer for that.
00:36I'm Professor Hannah Frye,
00:38your hammer-wielding, tech-curious tour guide
00:45to the secret genius of everyday objects.
00:48There is one law of physics that you need to know.
00:50In each episode,
00:54I will take one seemingly ordinary item
00:59immediately smoking.
01:02And I'll look at it in, frankly...
01:04Yeah!
01:06Obscene detail.
01:08Two googly eyes.
01:09It has 180 degree view.
01:12Meet the people who helped make it.
01:16This is the very first air fryer.
01:18And follow the twisty, turny journey
01:21through the history of its invention.
01:23If you overshoot the turning point,
01:25don't try to do this.
01:27It's wobbly, Johnny.
01:29Yeah, it's just wind.
01:32Warm up your fingers, folks.
01:34This time, it's the doorbell.
01:38Yes!
01:39But this isn't just any old standard ding-dong.
01:43This is a marvel of modern technology.
01:47The smart doorbell.
01:50And if you're as addicted to online shopping as I am,
01:52it means you can keep an eye on your postie
01:54wherever you are in the world.
01:56And keep an eye out for intruders.
02:00This all-seeing device is taking over our doorsteps.
02:05But how did a garage tinkerer who hit the jackpot...
02:09In 2018, sold Amazon for a billion dollars.
02:13Some Soviet spy tech...
02:15You sure you haven't just made a sort of futuristic disco ball?
02:18And a student desperate for a drink.
02:21We did not think this was a big deal at the time.
02:22We just were having fun.
02:23And we were thirsty.
02:26Create the technological phenomenon that is the smart doorbell.
02:39In the UK, a package gets delivered over a hundred times a second.
02:45That is a lot of ding-dongs.
02:47Whether it's Nest, Blink or Arlo,
02:49millions of us have hooked up our homes with a smart doorbell.
02:54So we can see, hear and speak to people.
02:59Hey. Can you chuck it over the wall?
03:01Without even going to the door.
03:03Yeah, it'll be fine. Don't worry. I think it's a pair of socks.
03:06And there is no bigger smart doorbell company than Ring.
03:10Last year, they sold an estimated two and a half million doorbells worldwide.
03:15So I've come to their L.A. headquarters, where today I'm meeting someone very exciting.
03:22Oh, my God. Did you actually build a fake human and put heat coils in it to test it?
03:27That's crime time.
03:29Well, for a science nerd like me, anyway.
03:31Meet Dave Ward, tester of hot fake humans and one of the company's earliest employees.
03:37Did people think you were crazy? Or were people on board straight away?
03:41Yep. I mean, rewind, it's 2012.
03:43The idea of being able to see what was happening at your doorbell just didn't really exist.
03:47And that was really the invention.
03:49There is blood, sweat and tears in every one of these.
03:52What we've managed to cram into something so small is really quite fascinating.
03:55Inside your smart doorbell is a complex array of components from the motion sensor to the chime.
04:05But let's start with the bit that gives us a virtual window into the world outside our front doors.
04:12It's the camera.
04:13Welcome to my workshop. An all-American garage. Basically, a temple to tinkering and taking stuff apart.
04:26Right, now, the main part of this that makes it a smart doorbell is the camera.
04:33So, let's get inside this little guy.
04:37That's the cover.
04:39That bit.
04:41And the battery.
04:43So, here is the little camera. Right there.
04:49Really teeny, tiny, cute little thing.
04:51Now, okay, this doorbell has to work whether your front door happens to be in sunny California or in grey, overcast Glasgow.
04:59To see if this camera really can cope with whatever is thrown at it.
05:04Just doing a connection here.
05:06I want to compare my doorbell cam.
05:08Okay, here we go.
05:10Ooh. God, that wasn't a good view.
05:13To Emma, our producer's fancy schmancy broadcast cam.
05:17If I come out here, into the sunshine, this is not, look, perfectly exposed, perfectly exposed, perfectly exposed, straight into the sunshine.
05:26I mean, my eyes haven't even adjusted yet.
05:29And yet, this camera is still capturing, ooh, all of me in that extremely bright light.
05:34Come over here.
05:36Come here, look straight into the sun.
05:38Thank you. How's that?
05:39That's very bright.
05:40Looks like that's one nil to this particular doorbell.
05:44Although, the overexposure does give me a rather fluttering, angelic glow.
05:49The other thing that you'll notice with this one is that, actually, it doesn't matter how far away I am, or close up, the focus is very good.
05:59Let me try that with you.
06:02Ooh.
06:04To be fair, these cameras are built for different jobs.
06:08Plus, nobody looks good that close up, apart from maybe Scarlett Johansson.
06:12But, clearly, this tiny tech punches above its weight.
06:16Time to find out how a camera with no operator gets to be so clever.
06:22So, this is me, yesterday, taking my dog for a walk.
06:27Your street looks well nice.
06:29I live across the street from Gwen Stefani's brother.
06:32That is Gwen Stefani's brother's neighbour and ring camera guru Elaine Smith.
06:42You can't change where this is placed, right, because this is fixed to a wall or to a doorframe, and we've got to deal with whatever that condition is.
06:50There's a lot that goes into making sure that every part of the image is actually in focus and clear for you to see.
06:57When you see a person walking by, what you're going to see is that person in focus every step of the way.
07:03You're still going to see that tree in the background, that great depth perception and detail in that image from our cameras versus what you're going to see from a traditional camera that's looking for that focus point and making everything else blur in the background.
07:18It's the super wide-angle lens that makes almost everything in the scene in focus.
07:24And it often gets pushed to the limit.
07:28We've got to solve for rain and hail and spiders and spiderwebs.
07:35A spider's web?
07:36I mean, spiderwebs are definitely a big problem for us. Spiders seem to love our products for some reason.
07:41When you've got something that close to the lens, you've got to adjust for the rest of the scene.
07:47Do you have like a spiderweb mode?
07:50No, we probably need to develop that.
07:52The other challenges with a remote camera are the changing light conditions it has to deal with 24-7, day or night.
08:02We can go all the way down to what we call 0.35 lux, which is like a sliver of a moon in the sky.
08:10A sliver of a moon in the sky.
08:12And you'll have full true colour night vision.
08:14How do you actually do it though?
08:15You have to have the right sensor. We have quite a large sensor that we're using now to take in as much light as possible in that low light situation.
08:23The camera sensor is the bit that takes in light via millions of tiny solar cells, which is then converted into the digital image.
08:32The bigger the sensor, the more light it can take in.
08:37Your sensor is sensitive enough that you can actually get colour even from that little amount of light.
08:42Yes.
08:43Amazing.
08:45Camera technology is now so good, it can record incredible images without anyone even operating it.
08:52But where did the idea of an always on 24-7 remote camera come from?
09:03Well, it all started with a man and a horse.
09:07In the 1870s, photographer Edward Muybridge was tasked with proving that during the gallop, a horse lifts all four hooves off the ground.
09:15Something too fast for the naked eye to see.
09:19By taking 12 successive photos, he was able to create the first moving image.
09:24And then in 1888, a certain Thomas Edison asked his assistant William Dixon to find a more efficient way to record movement.
09:34Dixon produced the kinetoscope, a kind of early peak show box.
09:40This is the original Edison kinetoscope, in which the audience, one at a time, viewed the picture through a peephole.
09:46Film was passed between a lens and a flickering light to create the illusion of motion.
09:51By the 1920s, the race was on to create smaller tech that could broadcast live images, something that would later become known as television.
10:06One of those inventors in the race was genius Russian musical maverick Leon Theremin, best known for his frankly bonkers musical instrument.
10:15Just like a crying cat.
10:24Today, I'm meeting Neil Smith, tech expert and theremin enthusiast.
10:30I mean, he's a, like, he's the most unbelievable character.
10:35He was certainly out of the ordinary, sort of a young prodigy.
10:40It's the 1920s and young Leon has caught the eye of his university physics lecturer, Abram Joffe, who sets in the challenge of making a television system.
10:55OK, now, I think you have to imagine this in the context of the time, right?
10:59Yeah.
11:00Because television wasn't even really a thing.
11:02There were people in many countries working on some sort of television system for broadcast.
11:09He read patents and he picked up on all of the ideas that had been tried and failed.
11:17Armed with all this research, Leon invents a ground-breaking camera system that he calls distant vision,
11:24and which Neil is in the midst of trying to recreate himself.
11:27Are you sure you haven't just made a sort of futuristic disco ball?
11:35With over 300 individually hand-machine parts, it's been a labour of love for Neil.
11:42You know what? You are, and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible, the biggest nerd I've ever met.
11:49I absolutely love it.
11:56Building this was no small feat.
11:59No images of the inside workings of Leon's machine exist, as they were made secret by the Kremlin.
12:05More on that later.
12:07Talk me through it. What on earth is going on?
12:08So this is the camera element.
12:12And what happens here is, if you imagine there's a scene over there, the light from that scene comes in, reflects off these mirrors.
12:21And then it reflects off that mirror.
12:24And then it goes down to a photo sensor inside that tube.
12:28This one here?
12:29Yeah.
12:30Leon's invention has two spinning mirror drums that work together to receive light and scan it across a tiny window in front of the photo cell light detector.
12:43His version of the smart doorbell's camera sensor.
12:47Then a radio transmitter sends the image to somewhere else. In other words, transmits it.
12:53And because it's an electrical signal, it's nearly instantaneous, even if you're 10 miles away, you see it in real time.
13:03This is absolutely extraordinary.
13:06Essentially, Leon had created live TV.
13:10So this was like one of the first times ever, ever, that like an image has been translated from one place to another,
13:20without the process of like chemically changing film.
13:25Remarkable.
13:26Really remarkable.
13:28Neil's magnificent model isn't quite a live demo stage yet.
13:33But this is what Leon's moving images would have looked like.
13:37That's 100 lines of resolution, which might not look impressive compared to the 2000 plus lines of our modern TVs.
13:45But it was revolutionary for its time.
13:47News of Leon's invention traveled all the way to the Kremlin.
13:52He was asked to do a demonstration.
13:55So he took one of his units and being flash, he put it on a tripod outside in the courtyard with a telephoto lens.
14:05And it was looking at the people that were coming up to this office.
14:08Which unsurprisingly peaked to the interest of a rather important man, Joseph Stalin.
14:14You know, the dictator running the Soviet Union.
14:17Stalin liked it so much that he said, let's pay him some money and tell him never to talk about it ever again.
14:25And we'll use it for purposes.
14:28Kremlin purposes.
14:29It disappears from the public record.
14:33It's gone.
14:34What do you think happened?
14:36From what I've heard, it was used for all the things that you would use a CCTV system for.
14:40Leon had inadvertently invented a security system slash spying tool and given it to one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
14:52It really was the cutting edge.
14:53But thus began a century of surveillance.
14:57Absolutely.
14:58And maybe more.
14:59And maybe more.
15:01As the Kremlin put the kibosh on Leon's TV tech, the man who got all the glory with his rival system in 1926 was John Logie Baird, crowned the father of television, just to rub it in.
15:15And over the next few decades, the technology really took off.
15:18And here it is, the greatest advance in television, so beautiful it enhances any decor.
15:26Although not everyone approved.
15:29Well, I think it'll have a fairly detrimental effect on the knitting industry.
15:34With TV came the rise of a very different type of live broadcast.
15:39One more aligned with the way Stalin, allegedly, used Leon's original device.
15:44Footage transmitted on a private system, otherwise known as CCTV.
15:50Here, one man watches all the major intersections of the city, phasing the traffic lights to fit the volume of vehicles throughout the day.
15:58By the 1960s, closed circuit TV surveillance was being used for everything from catching railway vandals to Thai royal visits.
16:06And by the 2000s, CCTV was in cities across the world.
16:12Eventually, the tech became so cheap and simple, we started to use it to monitor our homes.
16:19But it wasn't until 2011 that a frustrated inventor would find an entirely new use for CCTV, the camera doorbell.
16:28So whenever anyone asks what I do, or customs forms, when I go into countries, I always just put inventor.
16:35And it's very funny because the customs agent, you know, they'll usually look back and then they'll say, like, what?
16:41And now I say, I invented ring. And they're like, holy shit. I'm like, yeah.
16:44Yeah.
16:45That's right. Meet Jamie Siminoff. The ring doorbell all began as an idea in his head.
16:52From a garage much like this one.
16:55I was a tinker. Like, I've always had a garage or a basement.
16:59Everything I look at, I'm always trying to see how I can make it better.
17:03Hidden away creating, Jamie kept missing deliveries as he couldn't hear his doorbell.
17:08And I'm like, oh, there must be someone making a Wi-Fi video doorbell or even like a Wi-Fi doorbell and just nothing existed.
17:16Obviously, there was only one solution to create a doorbell that was also a camera, which he called the doorbot.
17:25And so literally the first doorbot that I built, I mean, this is the manufactured version.
17:30I literally built it, soldered it, you know, hammered it out on my bench on nights and weekends.
17:34It's like I built this stupid thing and I put it on the front of my house.
17:38The missed delivery problem was solved.
17:41But he soon realized there was an even bigger upside to seeing who was at the door.
17:47My wife is like, oh, this makes me feel safer at home.
17:51I invented a different way to do home security and no one had ever done that.
17:55His ingenuity caught the eye of producers on one of the biggest TV shows in America.
18:01Get a call from a random number, pick it up.
18:06The guy's like, that thing's awesome. You got to be on Shark Tank.
18:10OK. I'm like, we're going to be on Shark Tank at home.
18:12I'm like, we're going to be on Shark Tank.
18:15Shark Tank is quite a lot like our Dragon's Den.
18:19But being American with bigger teeth, bigger budgets and a much nastier bite.
18:25I was going to win. I worked really hard at doing that and I was, yeah, I was, I was going to win Shark Tank.
18:32Here, the small fry live in constant terror of the larger denizens of the deep.
18:39Unfortunately, his confidence was slightly misplaced.
18:42And then in the first like five minutes, Mark Cuban's like, Jamie, great idea. Can't see it getting that big.
18:49I need big things. I'm out. Like, so like, I thought Mark Cuban was like for sure going to invest.
18:55They just were like, how much is a regular doorbell cost?
18:58OK, well, yours is 200 bucks. Well, a regular doorbell can't be $20 and yours is 200.
19:02How big is the doorbell market? How many doorbells are sold a year? Well, not that many.
19:05Well, not that many. Well, then you can only sell a percentage of not that many.
19:09Or as they say on Dragon's Den.
19:11I'm out. I'm afraid I'm out. I'm out.
19:13I walked out of there just like, I was just like, I almost like, like blacked out.
19:18But when the show finally aired, people loved the doorbell.
19:22So this was like a legit big show, 13 minute TV commercial on us.
19:28And so being on Shark Tank was almost like a stamp of approval.
19:31And we immediately saw that people want this product.
19:35It became, I think it's one of the fastest growing hardware companies in history.
19:39Some might say they'd hit the jackpot.
19:42So we did Shark Tank and then we launched Ring at the end of that.
19:45That was 3 million. The next year was 30 million. The next year was 170. The next year was 480.
19:50And it didn't stop there.
19:52In 2018, early 2018, sold to Amazon for a billion dollars.
19:56Not bad for a garage tinkerer.
19:58By adding a camera, Jamie had turned a simple doorbell into a whole new form of home security.
20:06Our next component is the part of your doorbell that gets to work before the camera has even woken up.
20:13It's the clever tech that can detect within milliseconds when there's someone or something at the door.
20:20It's the motion sensors.
20:26Motion detection just gives you that next level of security.
20:29I'm back with doorbell don Dave Ward at Ring HQ to find out about the first line of doorbell defence.
20:38This motion sensor then, is the only point of it to be able to tell that there's an intruder coming?
20:44No. One of the big things is battery.
20:46The camera is the biggest drain on the battery.
20:50So they only want it to turn on when absolutely necessary.
20:53We're deciding whether we should wake the device up.
20:56So we start with passive infrared.
20:58So that's a sensor and it's allowing us to detect the movement of heat.
21:02Do you mean to say that you're triggering the doorbell via your body heat?
21:06Absolutely. As you walk towards that, we're detecting that heat signal.
21:09To cover a full 180 degree field of view, the doorbell has not one, but two passive infrared sensors.
21:19Time for my favourite hot fake human.
21:22So one of the things that we wanted to be able to do is to be able to test the device as we were having it in an environment.
21:28So we created a humanoid that moves across an environment, which is great.
21:32So a moving person or a replica of a moving person.
21:35And because they're not real humans, they can be subjected to all conditions and work all the hours.
21:41Is that just to stop some poor soul having to walk backwards and forwards in front of a camera all day?
21:45You need to do it more than once, I can tell you that.
21:47Really?
21:48Thousands and thousands and thousands of times.
21:50But the problem with passive infrared is that many things can give off heat.
21:54Like a raccoon.
21:56Or even a car.
21:58Dude, your car is rolling away.
22:00So to stop the camera being woken up by these force alarms,
22:03there's another way to make sure it's a human.
22:07So radar gives us now depth so we can understand not only the fact that we've now got a human shape in there,
22:14but we can see whether it's coming towards us, whether it's moving away from us.
22:19And maybe it's behind something.
22:21If I wanted to rob someone's home...
22:26Well, I hope you don't, by the way.
22:28I don't. I mean, I'm six foot tall and ginger, you know what I mean?
22:31I'd get spotted a mile away.
22:33Well, you know...
22:35OK, let's say, could I coat myself in ice packs and then maybe hide behind, I don't know, like a tree cut-out and approach the door?
22:45Would it set off the sensor?
22:46It would still set the sensor off.
22:48I guess I'm more suited to science than a life of crime.
22:52Infrared and radar are pretty good at sorting the hedgehogs from the humans.
22:57But there is a third fail-safe.
23:00Image detection using AI.
23:04An algorithm that runs to give us object classification.
23:07So we've got a model that identifies the difference between a human and other objects.
23:12And a leaf. And a leaf.
23:13Are you getting any false positives now?
23:15Absolutely. Absolutely we do.
23:16You know, a human from a distance, slightly different, maybe it's similar to, you know, an animal, for instance, depending on the angle it looks at.
23:23So you've got these three different sensors, the heat detection, the radar depth detection, and then the image detection.
23:31And none of those are perfect, but put together, they work really well.
23:35Three imperfect things create a great experience is the best way to describe it.
23:39To understand exactly how these smart doorbells manage to use heat to detect movement, I've got my tools out again.
23:46In here, this is where all the detection happens. This little frog-shaped guy, right in there.
23:55And you'll notice that he has two googly eyes pointing off in slightly different directions. That's deliberate.
24:00That's to make sure that it has 180-degree view.
24:06Froggy's googly eyes are actually our passive infrared sensors, or PIR.
24:12The hotter something is, the more infrared radiation is emitted, which I'm able to demonstrate with this handy infrared camera.
24:21You can see I'm very hot and sweaty in this Californian garage with no aircon.
24:27Now, this is essentially just a fancy version of what's going in here.
24:31But what is it that's allowing the googly eyes to detect heat?
24:34It's this very special substance called PZT, or lead zirconate titanate.
24:44Tiny pieces of PZT are hidden inside these motion detectors.
24:48Just a little bit of it just there, that little band of it.
24:51When PZT absorbs the infrared radiation from a warm object, like a person, this material changes temperature, creating tiny atomic movements within it.
25:04Enough to generate a small electrical voltage.
25:08Got a battery, just to add some juice to the system, and then this little disc of PZT over here, which should detect a temperature change.
25:19So, if I pop this little...
25:25The heat from the flame is changing the temperature of this substance, which in turn causes just this slight little change to the electrical current.
25:38Just enough that it can be detected by this circuit to turn that little light on.
25:44You can see it with the lighter.
25:47That is quite satisfying, isn't it?
25:50This thing is so sensitive that it can detect a temperature change as small as one millionth of a degree.
25:58Oh, I can do it with my finger as well. Look at that.
26:00These tiny pieces of PZT in my doorbell's motion sensors pick up the teeny changes in temperature from up to nine metres away and alerts my doorbell.
26:13Oh, I think I might have melted everything.
26:20Which is why I was only allowed inside the garage and not in the house.
26:24All motion sensor doorbells use infrared.
26:27But where did the idea of harnessing it to detect motion come from?
26:33Well, back in 1800, astronomer William Herschel used a prism to split sunlight into its colours and found a form of invisible radiation beyond the visible light spectrum.
26:47Now, our eyes are sensitive to a particular range of frequencies which we call visible light.
26:56But visible light is merely a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
27:01He had discovered infrared.
27:04And most intriguingly, he realised it emitted more heat than visible light.
27:09Experimentations continued through the 19th century, but it wasn't until the 20th century that we really found a purpose for it.
27:19War.
27:22These soldiers could have considered that the trees and the darkness gave them reasonable concealment.
27:28But to a man wearing electronic binoculars, they're all clearly visible.
27:32So how did this high-tech military kit get into our homes?
27:36It just all comes down to mid-century suburbia.
27:41In the late 60s in the USA, a mix of economic and social pressures sent crime rates soaring.
27:48People who had achieved the dream of owning their own home were becoming increasingly concerned about people breaking into it,
27:56about all the murderers and burglars who are potentially on the prowl.
27:59And so there was a big increase in the demand for house alarms.
28:04Burglar alarms that detected motion were available, but notoriously unreliable.
28:11I've got some of them here. Just take a look at the beautiful technology that was available in the 1960s and 70s.
28:18First up, you've got these little sisters here. This is a photoelectric relay system.
28:22One side, one unit, has a little light beam coming out. You can just see that there.
28:29And this gets placed opposite the sister unit, the receiver.
28:35I haven't hooked this up to an alarm. I've actually hooked it up to an electric pencil sharpener in a woodshop when in Rome.
28:41A beam of light travels across to the receiver. But if you break that beam, an alarm is triggered.
28:49And then there's my ultrasonic battery powered one.
28:55So you face this against a wall and then an ultrasonic beam bounces out from here, hits the wall and then comes back.
29:04As long as nothing passes between the wall and the unit, everything is hunky dory.
29:08And now you'll see why I was sharpening those pencils. Because imagine that you have a leaf, some particularly bulbous dust or an enthusiastic hamster that happens to break the barrier of this thing.
29:23Then it's an absolute nightmare. And now over here, imagine that some person walks past and knocks this and then that's going off as well.
29:30A whole neighbourhood is struggling. The burglars are running amok. They can do whatever they want.
29:37And it's an absolute... It's... It's an absolute nightmare.
29:44With forced alarms rampant, the industry was in desperate need of an alternative type of motion sensor.
29:51Luckily, one clever man had just the solution that would revolutionise the home burglar alarm.
29:56There was a guy called Herbert Burnman. Now, since about the Second World War, Herbie had been working in military research.
30:03And so he knew that the military had a perfectly effective motion detection system that used infrared.
30:12It would send out a beam of infrared radiation, wait for that beam to bounce back and use that to detect if objects passed in front of the field of view.
30:22The military system pumped out so much infrared, it needed expensive cooling towers to handle the heat.
30:31But Herbie, he knew that those systems were complete overkill for the suburban setting.
30:36And that meant that he could design a system that didn't spit out infrared at all, but just detected the existing infrared radiation that was being given off by warm bodies as they passed in front of the system.
30:52And so, in the early 1970s, he submits a patent for the first ever passive infrared detection system. The intrusion system, as he calls it.
31:06By only having to detect infrared energy rather than emit it, this system proved far cheaper and simpler to run than the fancy military versions, and therefore perfect for a burglar alarm.
31:19And this has got all of the components that you already recognize. He's got a heat sensing element. Essentially, this is now a motion detector.
31:31PIRs, or passive infrared, became the motion sensor of choice for burglar alarms, far more reliable than those early systems.
31:38But these days, it's also become a staple in everything from automatic supermarket doors to those magical self-flushing toilets.
31:51Computer brains, cameras and sensors make our doorbell smart. But it wouldn't be a doorbell at all without our next component.
32:00It's the chime.
32:02I'm back at Ring to meet their sound sommelier.
32:10Are you a doorbell connoisseur?
32:12I am, in a way.
32:14That is John Modestine.
32:16Jamie, creator of doorbots, original right-hand man, and a fine chime expert.
32:24How much thought did you put into the chime, right at the beginning?
32:27We intentionally had a couple simple requirements. One was that it was a new and unique sound. But secondarily, it couldn't be so different and alien from what people would expect the doorbell to sound like. So we need to kind of fit in the middle there. The sound we landed on, we launched on our first doorbell called DoorBot. It sounds like this.
32:47Beautiful.
32:50Yeah, it's just like buttery smooth.
32:51Yeah, it is.
32:52And then you have this like very harsh, you know.
32:56It's much sharper.
32:58Is it just me? Or does it sound like John prefers the original chime?
33:03Yeah, if you notice there, there's similar notes, but the frequency range on the Ring doorbell is much, much higher. And that was strictly informed by the speakers within the devices. So DoorBot had a much bigger speaker.
33:20It allowed for much deeper, rich tones. But the Ring doorbell had a much smaller speaker.
33:26But it doesn't even look like a speaker.
33:27So why did they change it?
33:30Jamie really pressured me and the team to like get this as small as possible so it didn't protrude off the wall so that it would be more aesthetically appealing and really match the architecture and styles of homes.
33:42It might not have been their first choice.
33:46If you'd known how many thousands and thousands and thousands of times you'd hear this sound in your life, do you think that you would have fought a bit harder?
33:53A bit harder?
33:56Maybe.
33:58It's tough to say.
34:00But it certainly served them well.
34:03We came up with something.
34:07We launched it and it's rung true to this day.
34:11I didn't even mean to do that.
34:13That's good though.
34:14And if I might just chime in one last time.
34:19Love it, hate it, you certainly won't forget it.
34:23But how did we get to the sound of today's ding dong?
34:29Before doorbell chimes, visitors used to announce their presence by simply knocking on doors, using knockers, or even calling out.
34:40Is anybody home?
34:42Not today, love.
34:44By the 18th century, wealthier households too posh to pummel their doors started using mechanical bell pull systems for a more refined visitor experience.
34:55But in the 1830s, an entirely new type of chime came to town.
35:02I want to tell you a humdinger of a story.
35:07It's about an American guy called Joseph Henry, who is one of the great scientists of the 19th century.
35:12But unlike the other guys like Faraday and Darwin, you've probably never heard of him.
35:16Joseph Henry was obsessed with the recent scientific discovery of electromagnets.
35:25Now, as the name might suggest, electromagnets are just magnets that can be turned on or off with electricity.
35:33Sort of say what you see.
35:35And you can make one yourself using just a nail, some copper wire and a battery.
35:41Allow me to demonstrate.
35:42You've got a nail with some wire around it.
35:45Doesn't do anything interesting, it's just a boring combination of two metals.
35:49However, if you pass electricity through this wire, you should expect a magnetic field to form.
35:59A magnetic field that is capable of overcoming the effects of gravity.
36:04Look at that!
36:12I'm not actually faking excitement.
36:17No wonder this was a scientific curiosity.
36:20No wonder all the cool kids in the science circles were playing around with this.
36:24Magnets have been attracting the coolest kids for nearly 200 years.
36:30And just like me, Henry was hooked.
36:31He continues experimenting with electromagnets, making them bigger and stronger.
36:38Eventually, he builds one that can lift a ton in weight.
36:44Which is a world record at the time.
36:47And that leaves him absolutely convinced that these things can have a practical use.
36:53The trouble was convincing everybody else of their potential.
36:58Until, that is, he realises that the way to get his electromagnet noticed is to turn it into something that everyone will want.
37:08Go on then, tell us what we made you make.
37:11So this is a replica of Joseph Henry's electromagnetic doorbell.
37:17That is inventor Ruth Amos and her latest cracking creation.
37:23So Joseph Henry was obsessed with electromagnets.
37:27And his party trick is he liked to rig up a doorbell.
37:31Button.
37:33Electromagnetic chime.
37:34And then he would press the button and everyone would be genuinely amazed at the fact that he had this like chiming doorbell.
37:41Wow, things were simpler back in the 1830s.
37:43You could just get a horseshoe, some copper wire and entertainment for hours.
37:47All right, so talk me through the design then.
37:48OK, so we've got the button, little bell, and the way that this works is, if you can see here, we've got an electromagnet.
37:57And when the button is pressed, the circuit will complete, which will mean this little arm thing, will be drawn towards the magnet, which obviously dings the bell.
38:09Now that is a single ding, and what we have is a chime.
38:14And what happens is, as the electromagnet pulls the little lever towards it, that disconnects the circuit.
38:21And so that stops being magnetic, the little lever goes back down, and then the circuit starts again, and it becomes magnetic.
38:28And so literally the little lever just goes back and forward and chimes the bell.
38:32So this is quite useful, you could have a bell, it could ring in different rooms, you could wire it up reasonably simply,
38:36and then you would know if someone was at your door, you wouldn't miss your important guests.
38:41All the fancy rich people must have been clapping their hands with glee.
38:46But let's see if it actually works.
38:49Beautiful.
38:54I'm channeling my 1830s ancestors.
38:57It's disconnected, let's see.
38:59OK, here we go.
39:02Oh, yeah, OK, let me...
39:06Try again.
39:08No, not hitting the bell now.
39:10Go.
39:14It works!
39:16Yay!
39:18The look of glee on your face is absolutely amazing.
39:22I mean, you would be impressed, wouldn't you?
39:24Can you imagine?
39:26There's someone at the door in the east wing!
39:28Turns out, some copper wire and an old horseshoe really is hugely entertaining.
39:37Henry's electromagnetic chime was the world's first electric ding-dong.
39:42By the end of the century, it had become the must-have gadget among the wealthy elite.
39:46Incredibly, doorbells based on Henry's tech kept ringing well into the 1960s, when smaller integrated bells took over and the range of sounds expanded.
40:00Hi, Helen. Gee, you look nice.
40:03Now there's a man who knows what buttons to press.
40:06By the 1970s, we'd gone far beyond just a simple ding-dong, and Big Ben doorbells were all the rage.
40:13And with today's digital doorbells, you can, to the delight of your door-botherer, belt out pretty much any sound under the sun.
40:27Hello?
40:33Today's doorbell lets us see and answer our front doors from another room, another house, or even another country.
40:41Our next component is the clever tech it uses to speak to the world.
40:47It's the communication chip.
40:56I'm back at Ring's LA headquarters.
41:00Do these doorbells catch Santa as he goes round?
41:03I'm sure it has. There's a lot of things he's have caught.
41:05That is Chief Technology Officer and Santa Catcher, Dr. Mike Balog, who wants to show me just how swiftly the doorbell can communicate with the world.
41:16And Santa, obviously.
41:18Merry Christmas!
41:19That time, we say, from glass to glass, from the image at the sensor to your phone, is really important.
41:26So, as in, like, the glass on the front of this, on the front of the lens?
41:28So, the glass on the front of your mobile device.
41:30And how long do you aim for that to be?
41:32In the two-second range, less than that, right?
41:34Wow. Okay.
41:35I really like that there's, like, this kind of chain of things that happen to, like, turn this thing on.
41:40So, like, the PIR sensor, the radar's kicking in, the image recognition kicking in.
41:46But then what happens?
41:48Once we determine that we want to actually record something, right, the image processor on this side will begin to capture the video,
41:57and then it'll talk to the communication chip.
41:58And then the data will flow between the two of them, and the communication chip will then encrypt the data and send it up to the cloud.
42:05How many people have got these on their doors? Like, tens of millions, right?
42:08Definitely.
42:09That's a lot of data, then.
42:11So, data centers have been strategically positioned around the world to spread the data load as equally and quickly as possible.
42:19Although, even then, certain days of the year proved difficult.
42:25For us, the big day is Halloween.
42:27Because we're trick-or-treating?
42:28Yes.
42:29Oh, I really like that.
42:31That's really sweet.
42:33Do you have to actually do anything to prepare for it?
42:35So, the teams actually spend a few months coming into Halloween, getting ready to be able to have the system scaled and pressure tested
42:44to make sure that everything's going to operate as intended.
42:49But we've seen up to 278% more concurrent live-view sessions.
42:53Wow.
42:54So, like, the number of concurrent sessions streaming to the cloud.
42:58Like a massive load on the system.
42:59Massive.
43:00Extraordinary.
43:01Right.
43:03Sounds like more trick than treat to me.
43:06With every recorded video being automatically uploaded to the cloud, there are obviously concerns about how secure it is.
43:16The idea is that, you know, the video is encrypted in a way that only the communication chip's going to see it.
43:23And then the communication chip then talks to our cloud.
43:25I want to talk to you a little bit about the privacy of the footage.
43:28What's your, sort of, take on that?
43:29Privacy is very important for us.
43:32Right now, the way the system has been built, no employee can see any live views or drop into any calls.
43:39It's not possible.
43:41And the way that we have set up policies and access control is extremely restricted to even see recorded videos, right?
43:47We take that very seriously.
43:50All sounds very reassuring.
43:53And yet, many doorbell companies have been susceptible to hackers and rogue employees accessing customers' private footage.
44:01So, it's worth checking if you can get extra protection by ticking an encryption box in your settings.
44:07And it's no wonder opinion on these devices remains divided.
44:11I think when it comes to smart doorbells, it's very easy to either get excited about the technology and what that allows you to do,
44:16or, on the other side, to be really concerned about the erosion of privacy that they enable.
44:23In 2021, a judge ruled that cameras and a doorbell on a house in Oxfordshire
44:29unjustifiably invaded the privacy of a neighbour.
44:34The judge said Mr Woodard's devices broke data laws and contributed to harassment.
44:39Which does make you wonder, if you're caught on camera, what are your rights?
44:43Well, by law, if you use a doorbell camera, you have to tell people they're being filmed.
44:50Although, in practice, people often don't.
44:53Hi!
44:54And you can't share footage of someone without permission, unless it's to show probable criminal activity.
45:03Which brings us to the flip side.
45:06Doorbell footage has also been used as evidence in solving everything from arson to high-profile murders.
45:12Not forgetting the admittedly less serious case of Mr Fry of Weymouth, no relation, who accused his takeaway delivery driver of eating his chips.
45:23Whether they do more harm or good, many of us have been seduced by the smart doorbell's ability to connect.
45:31Which all starts with the communication chip.
45:33To find out how it works, I'm bringing out the big gums.
45:43Right, so here it is, right here.
45:46The communication chip.
45:47Now this is doing something very clever indeed, called packetisation.
45:52Which, I'll admit, doesn't sound particularly sexy.
45:56But is absolutely fundamental to the way that the internet works.
46:00And the reason you can chat to your postie from the other side of the world.
46:03It's taking all of the footage from your doorbell, all of the audio data, all of the video data.
46:08And then, rather than just spewing it out into the internet in one long stream, it is chopping it down into teeny, teeny, tiny little packets of data.
46:20Smaller packets of data means that big files, like the video from your doorbell, can be sent across the internet much faster, using a thing called packet switching.
46:30It's pretty high tech, but I can show you how it works using my slightly less high tech marble run.
46:38Now down here, these little marbles, these are my packets, these are like the little bites of audio and video data that need to be sent.
46:46And the run itself, this is like the structure of the internet, all of the different routes that data can travel.
46:52Some of this might be fibre optic cables, some of this might be satellites in the sky.
46:55Now, in the bad old days, all the data would be sent in one big old chunk, one single string of ones and zeros.
47:05Which, as you can see, is extremely slow and constantly getting stuck.
47:10But, with packet switching, each one of these packets can be sent through the internet with the address of my phone.
47:18A header, as it's known.
47:19Knowing that it doesn't matter what route they take, because they can be reassembled when they arrive at the other end.
47:28All within a millisecond of each other.
47:33So the chip in your phone now is doing this job of the reassembly, which reconstructs to a perfect H.
47:40Now, this chip manages to do this thousands and thousands and thousands of times.
47:49Reconstructing your original doorbell footage on your phone within milliseconds.
47:56Allowing you to have that seamless conversation with your postie.
47:59By making packet switching possible, the communication chip gives us live access to our doorbell footage no matter where we are.
48:09But where did the idea of breaking up data so it could be sent around the world at speed come from?
48:16Well, in the 1950s, the nuclear arms race between the USSR and the US was hotting up.
48:28With today's artillery, we have extended the fist distances never before believed possible.
48:33Given it a striking force that staggers the imagination.
48:35As tensions rose, America decided to decentralize their high-level communication system to stop a nuclear hit from Russia taking out the whole network.
48:47Cue electrical engineer Paul Barron.
48:51It was a period of great danger with missile systems being built.
48:56Both countries had their missiles aimed at each other.
48:59Paul's solution was a network of connected computers that shared information using packets of data sent via different routes.
49:09In other words, packet switching.
49:11Though he called it hot potato routing, which I much prefer.
49:17His work laid the foundation for ARPANET, an early version of the internet that both the military and universities used to share information.
49:26And in 1982, a young computer nerd would change the world forever when he used packet switching and that early internet system to talk to a vending machine.
49:40We did not think this was a big deal at the time. We just were having fun. And we were thirsty.
49:46That is David Nichols. In the 1980s, he was a computer science grad student at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania.
49:54We all loved our sodas. You know, there's a culture of late night hacking. So you get a Coca-Cola to keep yourself awake.
50:06My office was about a three or four minute walk away from the Coke machine in an adjacent building.
50:12And one night I was sitting there at my terminal and thinking, I want a Coke, but I also know that it runs out from time to time and I'm going to walk over there and it may be out of Coke and I'm going to be disappointed.
50:24So, to avoid a long, needless trudge to an empty machine, David and his fellow classmates did what most computer students would do. They found a technical solution.
50:34The characteristic of a computer nerd is that they're happy to spend days working on a program that will save them 10 seconds every time they run it.
50:44This Coke conundrum was like catnip to a coder's brain.
50:48The machine used sensors to show how many sodas were in each column and David's classmate came up with a plan.
50:54John Zarny had taken on himself to take this idea and actually go build a hardware that would interface with the Coke machine.
51:01It was a micro computer that fit in the ceiling up above the Coke machine.
51:05The computer hacked into the vending machine and found out how many sodas were in it.
51:11David was then able to write a program that used packet switching to retrieve and send the information via ARPANET, that early internet system.
51:20So, the protocol that we had in the Coke machine was a very simple one.
51:27You would send a packet that essentially asks, what's the state of this machine?
51:32And you would get a packet back that would say, oh, there's this many columns of Cokes, this many buttons that you can push.
51:40And the first and third one are empty, but the rest of them have Cokes in it or whatever.
51:43Now, anyone on the ARPANET could connect to the machine, whether you were in Pennsylvania or even California.
51:51Although, that would be a really long way to go for a fizzy drink.
51:55We didn't think it was interesting to anyone else on the world whether our Coke machine was full.
52:01But when we discovered we could let them know, of course we did it, because that's too funny not to.
52:06David didn't know it back in 1982, but the moment his vending machine came online, it was the birth of what's now known as the Internet of Things.
52:20Many would say you're the inventor of the Internet of Things?
52:23I don't know that many would.
52:24Now, don't be modest, David.
52:27The Internet of Things refers to the billions of devices around the world that are controllable by you via the Internet.
52:34Everything from light bulbs to TVs, and of course, your smart doorbell.
52:39Did I foresee all of this? I don't think so.
52:43When I left, the Internet of Things wasn't a thing.
52:45We had built an Internet of Things without an S.
52:48Following on from David's Coke machine, many connected technologies were to follow.
52:55Like the notorious Trojan Room coffee pot, a prototype camera installed in a room at the University of Cambridge in 1991 to monitor the all-important coffee supply.
53:07Is it just me, or is there a caffeine theme to all of these inventions?
53:11Every three seconds an image is grabbed of the world's most famous coffee pot, the first live feed of an inanimate object.
53:19Today, the Internet of Things is a near $1 trillion market.
53:25And it's estimated that by 2030, there will be 125 billion smart devices.
53:35All passing through their own communication chip.
53:40The smart doorbell offers a window to the world from a piece of technology fixed to your front door.
53:47But what if you gave it wings, so it wasn't stuck in one place at all?
53:52This is the future.
53:55We can already see and speak to visitors at the door.
54:00Keep an eye on security.
54:01And even chat to our pets if we want to.
54:05Damn boy.
54:07So, what's next?
54:09Well, come fly with me and find out.
54:11She was taught by John Nash.
54:13Yeah.
54:15He was the assistant in her physics class.
54:16That is former student of the beautiful mind himself and Ring CEO, Liz Hamron.
54:23She's giving me a sneak peek of a futuristic new prototype.
54:28Tell me about the drone then.
54:30It is for inside your house and it is also for when you are not home.
54:34It's quite unusual to have an internal drone.
54:36It is. You know, people are used to seeing drones outside.
54:39And what the idea there was, people don't necessarily want cameras in every part of the interior of their home.
54:45So, we're like, well, how can we solve this problem?
54:47And so, we came up with this idea of this always home cam.
54:50The drone is controlled by the same app as your smart doorbell.
54:55And similarly, only starts to record when sensors located around your house detect motion.
55:01So, it will stay docked and then when something happens, whether it's a sound or a break or a sensors trip,
55:09the camera can undock, fly over to that area and then show you exactly what's happening.
55:14Can we see it in action?
55:15Absolutely.
55:16As the always home cam is still in development, the flight is being closely monitored by technician Stephen.
55:24So, this is like a predetermined path?
55:26Yes, and it's flying a path that it knows.
55:29This home drone is pre-programmed to know the path around your house.
55:36The red dots represent the waypoints of its planned route.
55:42So, what, if I get in its way, it's not going to hit me in the head?
55:44It is not.
55:45To avoid bumping into obstacles, like my head, it's also equipped with its own navigation technology.
55:53A combination of cameras and depth sensors represented by the green dots on this screen.
55:58So, now you've interrupted its path, it sees you.
56:07Maybe not my wisest idea to test out this theory with my face.
56:10And just, oh!
56:11Let it go.
56:17It might give you an added sense of security.
56:21But there is a downside to this futuristic flyer.
56:24For your furry friends.
56:26Oh.
56:28It is not meant for when you are home.
56:31In case of collision.
56:32It includes your dogs and your pets.
56:33Like, it's literally for no one home.
56:36Which seems like a slight flaw in the design, considering over half of the population have a pet of some sort in their house.
56:43Could you use this to spy on other people?
56:48No, because it is, again, designed to be indoors.
56:52We would never encourage anyone to be spying on other people with our products.
56:55If only Stalin had had Liz's morals.
56:58Our doorbells have come a long way.
57:03From the electromagnetic buttons of the 19th century to the super high-tech home security combos of today.
57:12I think there's a few different perspectives that are worth considering when it comes to smart doorbells.
57:17You can see the appeal of never missing a delivery and getting additional peace of mind.
57:21Although any technology that invites even more surveillance into our lives does need to be properly regulated and controlled.
57:31But I think that there's one thing we can say for sure about smart doorbells.
57:35Which is that even if you didn't ask for them, they are not going away.
57:42Next time, it's the motorway.
57:45They are the backbone of the country.
57:48What's he doing in that lane? Do you know what I mean?
57:51It's the story of some wild swimming.
57:54It's gone.
57:56A Formula One legend.
57:58I'm off the ground completely.
58:00And there's no barrier.
58:02And a 1960s road sign revolution.
58:05The signs that existed, they were absolutely chaotic.
58:11The Open University has produced a free poster exploring what lies behind the genius of some everyday objects.
58:18To order a copy, call 0300 303 2061.
58:23Scan the QR code or go to bbc.co.uk forward slash secret genius and follow the links to the Open University.
58:31The Open University.
58:32The Open University.
58:37Transcription by CastingWords