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Linksys routers will soon monitor your breathing as well as movement

Linksys routers will soon monitor your breathing as well as movement

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Linksys Wellness Pods next to a Velop mesh router.
Linksys Wellness Pods next to a Velop mesh router.
Image: Linksys

Linksys Velop mesh routers can already sense movement inside homes, now they’re adding the ability to monitor the health of human inhabitants with the introduction of new Wellness Pods.

Created in collaboration with AI company Origin Wireless, Wellness Pods work together with Linksys Velop Tri-Band nodes and Linksys Aware software to track breathing patterns and sleep quality, according to Linksys. They can also be used to detect falls of elderly family members. It does all this without the use of wearables or cameras, which could alleviate some privacy concerns.

Linksys is able to detect motion by measuring disruptions in radio wave intensity between at least two Velop nodes caused by a person or animal walking through a room, for example. According to Gizmodo, Linksys Aware measures the network about 30 times a second, but adding a few Wellness Pods to the network increases the sampling rate to 1,500 times a second. That provides enough detail to detect even subtle movements in a room like human respiration, according to the company.

Linksys isn’t providing an exact date or price for the Wellness Pods, but says they should arrive sometimes later this year. A subscription to Linksys Aware currently costs $2.99 per month or $24.99 annually.