Mysterious smart home company Leeo is finally pulling back the curtain on its first product: a smoke detector aid.
Unlike, say, Nest's Protect smoke detector or even its thermostat, you don't have to play electrician and start dismounting and rewiring devices to install Leeo's product. You simply plug Leeo's smart smoke detector aid into an electric socket, and you can get to work making your existing alarm smart as soon as you download Leeo's companion iOS app and input a few pieces of info.
While it's in the 'smoke alarm' realm, it is actually using sound detection rather than smoke detection to do its job.
Smoke alarms in the U.S. all have, per federal regulations, the same beeping sound. All regulated smoke alarms beep at the same frequency, volume, and so on. Leeo's device has been trained to recognize that particular sound, and when it hears it, it alerts you (or whomever you've chosen).
Clever, isn't it?
The Smart Alert Nightlight is actually a smoke alarm aid and nightlight combo. Americans buy more nightlights than they do smoke alarms, according to Leeo's team. You can customize the light's color through the app - it offers what seem like an infinite number of color choices.
It also detects temperature and humidity levels, which can be useful when leaving a pet at home alone, for example.
The inspiration behind the smoke alarm companion came after a friend of the founders lost his house in Wisconsin to a fire a couple of years ago. As cofounder and chief executive Adam Gettings told me, their friend had Internet, smoke alarms, and a smartphone, yet his house burned down.
With Leeo, when a fire - or at least smoke - sets off the alarm, Leeo's gadget lets you do a few things. First, it will notify you and call your phone. From there, you can answer the call and listen into your home if you want to check if the alarm is actually going off, for example. The app also gives you the option of contacting your local fire department (even if you're physically elsewhere when this is happening) and notifying the emergency contacts you've put into your app via call, text message, or email.
Of course, Leeo is not the first company in the smart home space making consumer-friendly aids instead of devices that entirely replace others. For example, Emberlight's upcoming lightbulb socket also turns an ordinary home item into a smart one that's connected to the Internet. Belkin's WeMo light switch takes a similar approach as well.
Though the Leeo device doesn't detect other smoke alarm sounds, like the whiny cries of dying batteries, for example, Gettings and cofounder Charles Huang said that it could if it was trained to. Carbon monoxide sensing is also something currently lacking that the company could eventually add.
The Smart Alert Nightline is currently not fit for other countries, not just because it is built only to detect U.S.-standard smoke alarms, but also because other products could be better suited to people's needs in other countries. The U.K., for example, is requiring homes to get smart meters by 2020, so in this case, Leeo could fare better by helping them with that.
Due to its strategic partnership and investment from E.ON, a German holding company that is one of the largest investor-owned electric utilities companies in the world, Leeo is already working on products in 11 countries.
Leeo is also looking at how its device can help homeowners save on insurance and is talking to insurance providers about becoming an official safety device.
You'll be able to order the device from Leeo's website or Amazon in a couple of weeks for $99. For context, Nest's Protect smoke alarm also sells for $99. The device will hit retail shelves in 2015.
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