Americans don’t think that smart-home technology is affordable,” she said. However, she believes connected devices have reached an inflection point, and may take off “in a very meaningful way.”
The products Quirky rolled out Tuesday are meant to convince the public that connected devices can be useful and affordable. One of those devices, called Tripper, is a tiny sensor that alerts homeowners, through their smartphones, when doors and windows are opened. Tripper, priced at $40, is expected to be available in a few weeks, Kaufman said.
Another device on the way is Overflow, a moisture and water sensor that detects flooding in the home. It is priced at $35 and due next February.
The Outlink smart outlet can be controlled by smartphones and monitors real-time energy usage of the appliances that are plugged in. That is expected to ship in December with a $50 price tag.
Kaufman said Quirky needed to grow and add expertise to fully pursue the connected devices category. Last April, when the partnership with GE was announced, Quirky had 121 employees, including six engineers, he said. Now his company has more than 314 people on staff, with 79 engineers around the world.
Quirky has also expanded from its Manhattan home base to offices upstate in Schenectady, west to San Francisco, and overseas in Hong Kong. Further, Kaufman said in a few weeks the company expects to complete construction on a micro-factory in San Francisco dedicated to producing smart-home products. “On Quirky.com, you will be able to build customized electronics that will be delivered directly to your door,” Kaufman said.
The micro-factory will have injection molding machines, automated circuit board assembly lines, and other equipment and services to manufacture customizable smart-home products, he said. First up will be “Spotter UNIQ” sensors, Kaufman said, which he expects to find use in home life.
Fong created the Spotter multipurpose sensors to help him track things around the house while looking after his then six-month-old son.
The original Spotter sensors can alert users to motion, light, temperature, humidity, and sounds through smartphones. With the new micro-factory, Quirky will produce variants, which let consumers decide the types of sensors that go into the device. On Quirky’s website, they can pick up to four functions to include in each Spotter UNIQ, and select a color scheme to help the device blend in with the house’s décor. (The original Spotters come in white.)
Fong told me that new ideas for this technology may come from consumer needs. “It’s not about what the sensor is; it’s the use case scenario,” he said. For instance, a customer of the original Spotter wrote about attaching the sensor to a board in their basement so the accelerometer would send an alert if floodwaters made the sensor rise. Fong also sees potential for using multiple sensors together for gathering information.
If a sensor detects a vibration on a door, he said, it might not mean someone has entered the home. However if the door sensor and a light sensor both get triggered, it likely indicates someone has physically entered the home, Fong said.
In any case, Kaufman believes connected devices in homes could offer a better tomorrow. “We were promised a future of jetpacks and flying cars—and it’s 2014,” he said. “Shouldn’t we all be living with a robot butler?” In fact, Quirky just launched a marketing campaign for the Wink Relay, a touch screen installed in homes that can control the Wink app, as a better alternative to robot servants. “Robot butlers don’t exist,” Kaufman said. “If they did exist, they’d be really awkward.”
