The plethora of smart home devices at CES makes it clear that home automation is an idea whose time has finally come. It seems there’s almost no household device now that can’t be controlled by, or at least communicate with, an iPhone.
The only downside is the expense of having to replace your perfectly good dumb devices with smart versions. This is the problem the Roost Smart Battery set out to solve, a WiFi-enabled 9v battery allowing your existing smoke alarm to send alerts to your iPhone when it’s triggered, so you get alerted even if the alarm is at the other end of the house or you’re away from home …
Of course, it’ll cost you rather more than a standard battery, at $40. But because the WiFi functionality only kicks into action when the alarm is triggered, it promises a 5-year life – and when it does finally notify your iPhone that it needs to be replaced, you can retain the WiFi section and snap in a replacement battery for $10.
You can pre-order now, with shipping estimated for June. We think it’s a great idea and will be giving it a try as soon as it’s available.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2GRHnhApZs]
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I still don’t like the idea of home automation devices. I feel like they would be easily hackable.
Yep, well thats 8 seconds of thought into the idea gets you, so…carry on.
Thanks!
I agree for the most part but I could see some use here, if someone wanted to be notified when they were not home and doesnt have a home security system they could call 911 from work. Or perhaps a deaf person could get an alert? But couldnt agree more that CES is filled with junk that will never make it to market, just scammy product teams seeking venture capitalists to send them large sums of investment cash.
This would be much more interesting if it were rechargable for that price. $10 to replace the battery portion of Roost is not cheap. It wouldn’t work in all cases, but it would be more interesting as something that clips in between a normal battery and the normal clip.
Seriously, you’re going to complain that battery is not rechargeable.Rechargeable batteries suck.
It as WiFi connected BATTERY that lets you swap this in instead of having to buy expensive smart smoke detectors. Are people this spoiled already to not being totally impressed by this?
Really? You want disposable batteries in your notebook, tablet and phone?
If they could have used a rechargeable Li-Ion battery in proper shape, size and power enveloper as a standard 9-volt that would have been ideal.
Personally, the reason I won’t touch this product is their apparent lack of info on the WiFi setup. Right now everything is 802.11ac @ 5GHz, but it can go to 802.11n @ 5GHz if such a device is present. I have to assume that this product is probably 802.11g @ 2.4GHz.
There wouldn’t be room for that in existing products. I don’t personally see $2/year after the initial cost as too big a deal.
Really? – $10 every 5 years? Thats $10 to protect your family. I guess you want it to come with the charger for free as well. cmon….
This is frigging genius.
Just don’t forget that now the battery in your smoke alarm needs to be reauthenticated if you change the password on your wifi. :/
Heh, I hate to think how many devices I’d need to reauthenticate if I ever changed my wifi password. I have a strong password and a separate guest network for visitors, so can’t see it ever being needed.
Depends on your router. In most cases once the MAC address is there, its there.