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Irrigation Controller Stolen, Wirelessly Rescues Itself
wooferhound sends along an amusing piece about thieves who got run over by technology and never knew what hit them. "A Rain Master Eagle-i Irrigation Controller recently stolen out of a housing development just outside of Tucson traveled nearly 80 miles before rescuing itself. The smart controller is now back in place on the wall where it was originally pinched... In this day and age, something that may look passive like an irrigation controller may not be so passive. The thieves didn't realize they were removing equipment that features 2-way wireless communications via the Internet. Three weeks later, the unexpected happened. The Maintenance Supervisor noticed a signal coming in from the stolen controller. He thought it was kind of odd that it was up and running... Whoever had stolen it had plugged it back in."
Nice to see that there is a shameless plug for the product in there that has nothing to do with the actual incident.
Crap like this makes me wonder if the story is really just candy coated viral marketing:
"Why are Smart Controllers so smart?" - The Eagle-i combines an intelligent design with evapotranspiration (ET) technology, providing a variety of ET-based scheduling features that optimize the efficiency of water resource allocation for any irrigation application