The security camera on the front door has become dramatically smarter over the past few years. AI detection. Facial recognition. Smart deterrence that can warn a stranger off the porch through a speaker. The cameras have deserved the attention they have been getting. The alarm sensors inside the house, though, the motion detectors in the…
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That was a great read. I’ve heard about this for a while so it is very interesting to see it will become real in the near future. While it is a very interesting concept it raises some important practical questions around deployment.
If this relies on the customer’s existing Wi-Fi network, then detection capability will seem to inherently mirror Wi-Fi coverage. In many homes, that means there will be blind spots. Realistically, a lot of home networks have coverage gaps or suboptimal design, so I’d expect that to directly impact sensing performance.
Alternatively, if providers deploy their own dedicated Wi-Fi hardware, then the challenge shifts to operating in already crowded unlicensed bands. Since these systems would fall under FCC Part 15 rules, they’re inherently more susceptible to interference and congestion. I’m curious how that variability impacts detection reliability, especially in dense RF environments.
I’d also be interested in how these systems handle environmental changes over time such as furniture movement, new devices, seasonal differences, etc. and whether recalibration would be required.
I’m also curious to see how providers implement this and whether there are built-in checks to validate that the RF environment is actually suitable for consistent performance, and provide ongoing alerts - like ‘trouble’ conditions - when the wifi sensing capability is degraded.
Regardless - I think we are all looking forward to putting the PIR sensor to bed in the near future. 
Whether it relies on the existing Wi-Fi network depends on implementation. The nami sense plugs transmit and receive so they don’t depend on the existing Wi-Fi network. It would be possible to design a Wi-Fi sensing system so they only receive, in which case it would depend on an existing network.
The nami system can also sense Wi-Fi from existing devices, as long as they behave a certain way. For example, they have to be devices that don’t go to sleep. And they have to transmit at regular intervals for the sensing devices to monitor. Hopefully we’ll have a list of nami-friendly Wi-Fi devices that can be used to extend the sensing network.
I have one running at my house with a single zone (3 sensing nodes in a triangle). During installation, whatever calibrating happened was automatic. I added them to Alarm.com (via QR code), plugged them in and the Alarm.com app told me whether the locations were OK. The first location I plugged one of them into wasn’t good so I had to move it. Once Alarm.com said they were all OK then there was a real-time chart for testing that showed motion detected. If I moved my arm or anything the chart would show a blip a few seconds later.
I’m not sure about the other questions at this point. I’m curious how the ADT implementation will differ from the nami/Alarm.com implementation.
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