Sense can make your home as smart as your smartphone

Smart home products are ten a penny, but this one claims to give your home the kind of powers usually only found in your smartphone.

Such as? It can detect when you walk into a room, recognise your voice and gestures, learn your preferences, and choreograph your connected devices to respond to you appropriately. Yes, we’ve seen most of this before, in the likes of smart lights and Amazon Echo. But Sense brings it all together in a pretty sexy package.

In practice, this means lights turn on when you walk into a room, music you like will start playing, and the thermostat will be adjusted to keep the house at a pleasant temperature. Like your phone, it can run third-party apps. So the more smart home devices you have and the more you use them, the more it will learn about you and adjust to your preferences.

Read more: Smart Thermostats explained

It currently works with Philips Hue light bulbs, the Sonos multiroom system, and Nest thermostat, with more promised. It knows who’s home using facial recognition and Bluetooth LE (presumably to see whose phone is in the vicinity). That way, your better half doesn’t get bombarded by your favourite ironic playlist when they walk into the room.

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It’s approaching its $100,000 funding goal and still has 29 days to go. Pledge $225 (£157) and it can be yours on an early bird. If successful, it will ship in December.