Aura uses your home's wireless signals to catch bad guys
The bad news is we can confirm that most homes are full of radio waves. Every Wi-Fi device, smart home gadget and smartphone is constantly sending and receiving them. The good news is that one company has figured out how to use all that digital noise to help secure your home.
“Everything in your house is somehow wireless,” said Cognitive Systems co-founder and Director Taj Manku, Ph.D. “When you think about how much is in your house, it’s actually quite amazing.”
This pleases Manku, because his company figured out how to use those radio waves, or the displacement of them, to detect movement. The breakthrough led to the creation of Aura, a most unusual motion detection and home security device.
Consisting of a tissue-box-sized hub and one wall-wart sensor device, the Aura system can see frequency signatures ranging from 680 MHz to 4 GHz (performing constant wireless spectrum analysis), covering essentially every wireless signal currently used for communication.
Seeing all those waves, though, is only part of the solution. Cognitive marketing strategist Stacey Tozer explained to me that the company developed its own silicon to be able to detect the signals and see when they’ve been disrupted.
“Wireless signals in an enclosed space like a house bounce around in a specific pattern,” she said. Aura can see a disruption and tell the difference between an organic one (made by a human being) and a manmade one [such as] a fan or fluttering drapery. Mechanical stuff moves the waves in a very rigid pattern. Humans disperse it differently, especially because our bodies are more fluid. Tozer even described us as “bags of water.”
Together, the hub and the sensor bathe up to 2,500 feet in a football-shaped coverage zone, which is enough for the average home. Anything disrupting the wireless signals in that space will be detected. If the system thinks there's a human source to blame, it will report it in the iOS or Android-based app.
Manku noted that the decision to use radio signals for detection as opposed to a camera that watches for movement is, at least in part, because they wanted to “cover a full home without invading people’s privacy.” That said, the system will work with IFTTT and could, through that, be connected to a webcam. On the other hand, if Aura sends an alert, you could then just as easily check your in-home webcam.
The Aura app is threadbare, showing activity as a sort of fever chart. You can see 12-hour, weekly and live activity views. The activity is even synchronized with time stamps. You’ll check the live view if you get one of the app’s activity notifications.
Manku explained that he has someone come in to his own home, where Aura is set up, and check on his cat. He showed me how the app captured the exact time she came into his home and when she left. He could see that she stayed exactly 30 minutes.
The app will let you identify your phone so you can set up geofencing and it can disarm when you, your partner or your kids come home. It includes microphones so you can listen in on in-home activity. If you think an intruder is in your home, you can set off Aura’s alarm.
Manku noted that detecting movement is just scratching the surface of what Congnitive can do with radio wave detection. And the device will get regular software updates.
Aura is now available for preorder at Cognitive Systems for $399. After CES, the price will jump to $499. The product ships on Feb. 28.
Topics CES Cybersecurity
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
