doing something useful with the sensor data, and making it all easy and reliable for consumers.
“You can really start collecting a lot of interesting data over time as you get a number of these sensors out there,” Jaech says. While individual sensors might have a fairly narrow purpose, “as you start cross-correlating the data, you can draw some really interesting inferences about what’s going on in the house.”
As SNUPI accumulates this data, it plans to publish a series of generic home-health suggestions. Eventually, as enough data is gathered about an individual house outfitted with these sensors, it could offer specific suggestions. Indoor air quality readings might suggest it’s time to replace your furnace air filter, for example. After many years, the system could even be used during a home sale to prove to the buyers that the home was well cared for, with sensor data demonstrating that there were never mold problems, or that if there were, they were rectified promptly, Patel says.
There are lots of new approaches to home automation, security, and hazards detection. Best known is the learning thermostat from Nest, a Palo Alto, CA-based company whose vice president of technology is Yoky Matsuoka, a former UW computer science professor and MacArthur Fellow. In recent days, Xconomy has written about Canary, a New York company that aims to do home security monitoring through a device that connects with a smartphone; and Revolv, a Boulder, CO-based startup trying to make managing the proliferation of smart home devices easier. Something called Spotter, from New York-based Quirky, appears similar to Wally, but it requires a pair of AA batteries and a Wi-Fi connection.
At the high end of the market, sensor systems—required by some insurers to reinsure after a leak—can cost $5,000 to $8,000 and require a plumber and electrician to install, Jaech says.
Insurers will also typically offer a discount to homeowners with these systems. Asked whether SNUPI has made progress in negotiating insurance-company incentives for its systems, Jaech says only, “Yes.”
The company believes its wallyHOME product will stand apart, opening a new middle-tier market with its $299 price (for a starter kit with a central hub and six sensor nodes, as well as the cloud-based service that alerts you when something’s amiss), easy setup, modern communications tools, and long battery life. The product is expected to hit the market in spring; SNUPI is accepting order reservations now.
Jacquelyn Jaech, SNUPI vice president of marketing and spouse of Jeremy, says they initially plan to market directly to consumers at home shows before delving into retail sales. The company has also been approached by property managers who have a major incentive to detect potential hazards that tenants might ignore, and to spot them before they do damage to adjacent units. They are considering a commercial version of the product, she says.
In an era of growing public awareness about surveillance, big data, and its privacy implications, SNUPI’s leaders say their products and services pose little risk. For starters, the transmission of data within the home itself is done using very low power and is difficult, even for the system itself, to detect. When that data is sent to the cloud, it is encrypted. Patel says the company will be transparent with customers about how it uses their data, and why.
“As a company and as a brand that has the power to look into the data, we have to be explicit about what we’re doing with it,” he says.
While we were talking, Patel showed me a text message alert from Wally indicating moisture was detected on the main floor of his home. He was not dismayed. It turns out the white, curved, computer-mouse-sized nodes are a favorite toy of his 1-year-old daughter.
“That’s her licking it,” he says, adding, “I have probably eight or nine of them. A couple in the car. A couple in her little toy bin. And there’s one in the diaper bag. This calms her.”
Patel never imagined this use for the technology. The company has heard from people who want to use it to monitor wine cellars, rare-book libraries, fish tanks, and art collections.
This is an important indicator of a product that has real potential, says Jaech, a 30-year startup veteran with category-defining products like Aldus PageMaker and Visio business drawing software to his credit.
“In both cases, there were way more uses of the technology than we envisioned,” he says. “And I think we’re going to find the same thing with this.”
