Linksys motion-sensing WiFi now uses all your wireless devices for more accurate alerts

Over the next decade, the smarthome as we know it will change dramatically thanks to technologies like Linksys Aware that turns a wifi network into a motion detector that monitors every corner of your home. The technology is still in its infancy, but Linksys has announced a major update that leverages IoT devices to improve its accuracy.

We first tested Linksys Aware at the end of 2019 and at the time the technology was more exciting for its potential than what the feature could actually do when deployed. Based on research that dates back to 2013 and earlier, Linksys Aware actively measures the signal strength of invisible radio waves radiating back and forth between nodes of a mesh wifi setup in a home. When these radio waves are obstructed, such as when a person walks between two nodes, the drop in signal strength can be measured and used as a makeshift motion detector giving a home a basic security system without the need for install additional hardware.

It’s a fascinating use of existing technology, but in its current form, the Linksys Aware service can only tell you that motion has been detected in your home, not where the reported event occurred. Therefore, it is too vague to be of much practical use, especially where a dedicated home security system can alert you to problems in individual rooms, or when specific doors and windows have been opened.

But at the start of 2021, Belkin will release an update for its Linksys Aware service which extends its connectivity to almost all wifi connected IoT devices in your home. Although previously limited to nodes in a Linksys mesh router setup, Linksys Aware will soon be able to use everything from smart speakers, video doorbells, thermostats, even TV broadcast boxes to improve the accuracy of its motion detection. It still will not be able to issue alerts such as “There is movement detected in your upstairs master bedroom”, but after updating, these alerts will include more details about the devices closest to the detected movements.

In the Linksys app, users will be able to ensure that all of their connected devices have a nickname that they recognize (like Google Nest Mini upstairs vs. Google Nest Mini downstairs) which should make decoding easier, in one glance, where the detected movements occurred. . It still puts a great deal of responsibility on decoding a Linksys Aware alert on the user, and it means that the service still cannot be configured with highly personalized alerts such as “Notify me only when motion is detected in the basement.” But it’s always a welcome update and one that continues to slowly reveal the real potential of this technology. Belkin once envisioned Linksys Aware as a tool that could keep an eye on each person’s specific health in a home secretly monitoring heart rates and breathing patterns, but we’re still a long way from that at the moment.

New users with a Linksys mesh wifi product (you need at least two nodes for this to work and Linksys has not yet introduced the feature to its wifi 6 products) can try Linksys Aware free for 90 days, after which the updated service will be kept the same subscription prices of $ 3/ month or $ 25/year.