Sensify can turn your zigbee bulbs into movement sensors

Imagine if your smart bulbs could double as movement sensors, without the need for any additional hardware.

That is the promise of a new technology that has received green light through the alliance of connectivity standards; The boys supervise both matter and zigbee.

The idea is that the Zigbee bulbs, such as those used by Philips Hue, can be updated through a firmware update to detect the movement, using the radio signals that they already emit.

Nor is it limited to zigbee bulb, any zigbee device fed by the network could also use too.

This is not just a theoretical concept; It is a wireless network detection technology (WNS) called sensify that has been in development for years by a company called Ivani. But now it has been approved by the CSA as part of its new environmental detection standard.

There are murmurs that Philips Hue will launch this function this year, and that other brands are expected to do the same.

The Philips Hue matrix means that WNS already introduced Wi-Fi with its Smart Bulbs bulbs in 2022.

Technology works detecting how radio signals are altered by movement in a room. It is not as precise as the dedicated movement sensors as MMWave, but it will be good enough to activate routines or alerts of Home Smart.

Ivani says that you can create detection zones grouping 3 to 4 devices together and, in the tests, discovered that these virtual sensors can respond to the movement in a second for convenience triggers, and in a few seconds for security alerts.

The false positives are rare, with less than one expected every six months for security triggers.

According to reports, the system requires at least three Zigbee devices in a room to work effectively.

The detection intensity can be adjusted to adapt to different rooms and use cases. The best part is that all this happens locally in its Zigbee network, without the need for cloud processing or personal data and without buying a new smart house center or a new Zigbee devices.

The fact that it can be implemented through a simple firmware update in a wide range of existing Zigbee devices makes it an exciting perspective for intelligent domestic users.