Lowe's brings the season to its Iris smart-home app with a Santa Tracker

This holiday season you'll be able to show your children that not only did Santa Claus come to town, but he moved throughout your smart home. Using the Santa Tracker on the Lowe's Iris app, you can place imaginary sensors around the house (simulated within the app) where ol' St. Nick is likely to tread on Christmas Eve. You can even set up an imaginary Santa cam to see him in the act. The idea is to have a fun activity you can do with your kids as you prepare for the holiday. If it sells a few more Iris kits for Lowe's, it will have worked out for everyone.

You can choose the right sensors with your kids, such as a Christmas tree sensor, a living room sensor, a milk and cookies sensor, and whatever else fits your home. The night before, you can make sure they'll all ready to go. Then Christmas morning, you can add to the magic by showing your kids that the sensors did in fact sense Santa.

Take a pic of your fireplace or your tree with your phone and the Iris app can use that as a "Santa Cam." Christmas morning, Iris will paste in a pic of St. Nick for extra proof of his visit to show your little ones.

Second-gen Iris by Lowe's customers will find the Santa tracker as part of their existing app and can use it as they please. First-gen and non-Iris customers can also download a specific Iris by Lowe's Santa Tracker and use that to the same end. It's available for both iOS and Android. It's clever holiday marketing for Iris, to go along with the recent launch of its second-generation platform. Again, the Santa Tracker won't actually involve any real sensors, which is why you can use it when you don't even have an Iris system.

Say what you will about the merits of an all-knowing, judgmental saint from the Arctic Circle. Plenty of parents bend over backward to keep the magic of the holiday alive for their family for as long as possible. That Lowe's has put out this gimmick app to help is a fun, harmless way to market its smart-home system.