Fever Detecting Doorbell Wins CES Award, Fools WSJ

Fever detection was a booming, comical, and dangerous market in 2020. While the market has now mostly busted, a new entrant has won a CES award for a doorbell that claims to detect fevers.

In this note, we examine the fundamental problems of detecting fevers with doorbells, how CES distanced itself from the award it gave this company and how the WSJ was fooled by this.

Company Background

The 'Ettie' doorbell is from Plott. Plott says they are a New Jersey company with a factory in China that builds tools for the DIY community to measure their surroundings and plan projects.

Plott's phone number is answered by a company named Northwest Instruments that says they design AR measuring tools for home design and construction. Northwest Instruments shows 5 employees on Linkedin, none of whom have experience with thermography or are listed in mechanical engineering roles.

Plott's CEO is David Xing, who has a background in finance and their creative lead is Matt Cultera, who has a background in graphic design.

We attempted repeatedly to speak with Plott. While the company responded initially, they never provided any information or material response to our questions.

CES Award

Ettie won a CES 'Innovation' award with the description centered squarely on its fever detection capabilities:

The First video doorbell that combines temperature tracking, image recording, real time alert and capacity management. Ettie senses the guests temperature and will give visual & audio alerts for whether the guest is permitted to enter based on their temperature reading. [emphasis aded]

CES Response

CTA, the organization behind CES, told IPVM that even though they gave them this award they were not endorsing the 'product claims' made:

The Consumer Technology Association does not endorse any product claims of Innovation Honorees. All products are reviewed by an outside panel of judges.

This is an odd position to take. The award is clearly based on the product claim of temperature screening. Otherwise, it is just another doorbell.

WSJ Fooled

The CES show fueled a stream of publicity, even the WSJ jumped on board, fooled by an admitted 'nonworking prototype' they borrowed and this obviously flawed demo:

It is as if Plott and the WSJ said "How can we demonstrate violating FDA guidelines, world standards, and science in as many ways as possible?"

This demo shows many fundamental problems:

• Placing a temperature screening device outdoors is highly unreliable and against standards. As the temperature rises and falls throughout the day or as wind increases or decreases, this impacts the accuracy of the reading. Climate controlled screening is critical and standard.
• Moreover, screening people outdoors is highly unreliable. Being outside in the cold (like the snow in the background of that demo) or the heat will materially change people's skin temperatures and make it far less likely to accurately relate to true body temperature. Preparing subjects for screening is fundamental, e.g., the FDA guidelines call for waiting 15 minutes indoors before the screening and, even if you think that is too long, doing it outdoors with no time to adjust, is clearly dangerous.
• Screening people while wearing a hat causes problems and is against FDA guidelines. The hat obscures the forehead, further impacting the reliability and accuracy of the results.

For reference and contrast, here are the relevant sections of the FDA guidelines:

And:

We have reported this to the FDA as this marketing violates FDA guidelines and, if the public were to use this, to face increased risk in determining entrance to one's home or business.