Is there anything HR won’t do to ruin your fun when the supervisor is away? If the new Logitech Spot is any indication, the answer is ‘no’. Usually, we’d expect Logitech to launch a peripheral. Technically, this is a peripheral but we don’t reckon you’ll see it pasted to the side of a PC gaming right unless the company adds some RGB.
The Logitech Spot is a small sticker-backed sensor designed to be mounted on a wall. Its main purpose is to keep an eye on the goings-on in an office. It’s not as invasive as a surveillance camera but it’s still a way for the higher-ups to ensure you’re swinging your pickaxe for the company’s benefit.
Logitech Spot the difference
The Spot can “be easily deployed throughout the office to enable smarter workspace automations, and to gather insights on room utilization, health and energy”, according to Logitech. That’s a very nice way of saying that it knows when people are in the room. It can’t tell whether you’re playing a Steam game or clicking away at your TPS reports but it does know that you haven’t returned from lunch on time.
That isn’t all it can do by any stretch and it also isn’t (entirely) intended to be Human Resources’ secret weapon in the ongoing war against workers. It’ll help building owners to know when space is underutilised — because nobody goes in there — and it might well confirm the existence of ghosts if deployed widely enough (we made that last bit up). It’ll also detect carbon dioxide levels, and particulate matter (it knows if you’re smoking or the building is on fire, we guess), plus the Logitech Spot also measures the environmental staples: temperature, humidity, and air pressure.
It’s powered by batteries — a single D-sized unit — which should last up to four years. The sensors are rated for up to eight metres straight forward and about 1.2 metres on either side of the Spot. Any room using them will likely have to stack several along the walls to capture the whole area.
That’s not an insignificant amount of data collection and it could provide some interesting insights. Does productivity drop when the weather is especially inclement or when Tracy from Accounts sets the air conditioning too high? Those are important questions for capitalists but they also don’t bode too well for the workers being monitored by the Logitech Spot. But there’s at least some breathing room.
The Logitech Spot isn’t priced yet and is only slated for launch around the middle of this year. We also expect it won’t make an immediate appearance in South Africa for a while so sneaking in late will just incur the usual odds of being caught for a bit.
