The self-install sensor will try to save you money on your water bill
Phyn, the smart water company that began life as a university research project, has announced a new Smart Water Assistant, an intelligent devices that detect leaks and help you save money.
Previously Phyn has sold a single device, the Phyn Plus, a smart water valve that required professional installation. But the new Smart Water Assistant is one you can install yourself under a sink, where you’ll just need to connect it to the hot and cold water lines. It’s also $400 cheaper than the Phyn Plus.
Read this: The best smart home sensors
Once installed the Smart Water Assistant will send you alerts (from the app and, if you allow it, SMS) if it detects a leak, pinpointing its whereabouts in the home and helping connect you with a local plumber. It can also track your water usage over time and offer tips to save money by being more savvy about your aqua.
But where the Smart Water Assistant gets really smart, is in how it learns the layout of your home and detects individual appliances hooked into your water system. It does this by reading tiny pressure waves that can tell it exactly where the water flow is coming from.
“When there’s water in your plumbing system and you’re not using it, that water and the pressure contained in there contains energy,” Phyn CEO Ryan Kim told The Ambient. “Less than a millisecond after you open your kitchen faucet, energy waves are being transmitted. We’ve figured out how to decipher it.”
To begin with, Phyn should be able to tell the difference between a shower being turned on and a toilet being used, but if you have multiple sinks/toilets/showers in the home, the app will soon start displaying events for specific appliances. These will appear as “Shower 1” and “Shower 2” etc, but you can label them in the app so you can see when “master bedroom shower” is being used as opposed to “guest room shower.”
“That opens up a whole treasure trove of interesting use cases,” said Kim.
Other features include freeze warnings and a ‘Plumbing Check’ that scans your system for things like poor seals or pinhole leaks. The new device is also compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant, so you can ask your chosen voice assistant for an update on how much water you’ve used that day or even have it switch the valve off. There’s IFTTT compatibility too, a new integration that arrives with the launch of the Smart Water Assistant.
The Phyn Smart Water Assistant costs $299 and will be available to buy exclusively from Best Buy or on Phyn’s website in late September.
