Belkin WeMo Home Automation Expands with New Sensors

Home automation is becoming a big thing at CES, and this year’s show was no exception. Belkin showed off a new line of Belkin WeMo products this week that further add to the growing portfolio of home automation products from the company.

Belkin showed off a water sensor, a door & window sensor, a keychain sensor, an alarm sensor, and a motion sensor, as well as a WiFi-to-ZigBee bridge that can take the load off of your smartphone or tablet if you have a lot of WeMo devices to control.

Going down the list, the motion sensor is similar to the company’s current wired motion sensor that was one of its first WeMo products. However, this new one is a bit more versatile and plugs directly into an outlet and is a lot smaller. It has a thirty foot range and a 90-degree field of view, and it can also capture false alarms that are triggered by pets, thanks to an infrared sensor that reads heat signatures.

The alarm sensor listens for your smoke alarm or security alarm going off by listening for certain frequencies. If it does, it’ll send you a notification on your smartphone or tablet. That’s pretty basic at this point, but the possibilities are endless for future automation.

The keychain sensor is essentially a proximity sensor that you can attach to pretty much anything that notifies you when it goes in and out of range. It also has a button on it that can activate certain actions when pressed.

As for the WeMo Door and Window Sensor, it’s capable of detecting when doors and windows open and close, and it even works on things like cabinets doors, lock safes, etc.

All of these new products will be released at some point during the second half of 2015 and pricing details have yet to be disclosed.