Kangaroo and the No Gateway, Wi-Fi Smart Home

In September, smart home startup Kangaroo will start shipping its range of smart home security devices and just-launched subscription services. The company is aiming its smart home offering at smaller homes, and even individuals within shared homes, with two subscription packages: one for homeowners and the other for renters. What is arguably most notable about the company, however, is the extent of its use of Wi-Fi throughout its offerings, which extends the ubiquitous home networking protocol to smart home devices long considered too small, too cheap, or too underpowered to support Wi-Fi connectivity.

Kangaroo launched in August 2018 with its Wi-Fi connected motion sensor. Its new products, announced at CES in January 2019 and now set to ship in mid-September, combine the motion sensor with a bundled “entry sensor.” The entry sensor, although similar in size and function to traditional wireless door and window contact sensors, does not communicate with the system. Instead, the motion sensor the entry sensor is bundled with detects changes in the magnetic field around the entry sensor device, which means the motion sensor needs to be deployed within inches of the entry sensor.

In addition, Kangaroo also launched a keypad/siren that also listens for smoke detector alarms and a water and climate sensor. The keypad/siren extends system control from just the central smartphone app, which had previously been the only point of management. The range is set to be further extended, with a pre-announced video camera set to join the Kangaroo range later on.

All of Kangaroo’s devices (except the entry sensor) operate using battery power and communicate using Wi-Fi.

The use of Wi-Fi speaks not just to the potential for battery powered Wi-Fi devices to compete against existing low-power protocols, such as proprietary, Z-Wave, Zigbee, and, increasingly, Bluetooth, but also to wider structural issues in smart home adoption.

Gateways have long been used to deliver central control points for in-home, low-power connected devices. They offer a central point of control and the ability to communicate with a range of protocols, typically within a single gateway. However, they also bring additional cost and complexity to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), service providers, and end users. Embedding Wi-Fi in a smart home device allows it to connect directly to the home router. 

Even so, Wi-Fi in small, but key, smart home devices such as contact, motion, and water sensors has been limited. Wi-Fi demands a larger, more expensive and are relatively power-hungry.However, the gap in chip pricing is narrowing, and bypassing the need for a gateway can ease pricing for consumers. For example, Kangaroo is pricing its devices aggressively: its motion sensor with its entry sensor is priced at US$30 while, by comparison, a Z-Wave motion sensor from Ring, which requires a gateway, also retails at around US$30.

According to Kangaroo, its motion sensor should deliver 12 months of use before the two AA batteries powering the device need to be replaced, and the company is betting that system simplicity will offset the end user inconvenience of having to replace batteries in their devices yearly. Kangaroo says it has worked to reduce power demand by 50% in its Wi-Fi device by optimizing its use and believes that the upcoming Wi-Fi 6 specification and the development of mesh connectivity in its system will further reduce battery drain on its devices.

Kangaroo’s commitment to Wi-Fi is notable, but even so, the company has still looked to leverage other protocols alongside Wi-Fi. Its systems can be armed and disarmed by key fobs that connect to the keypad via Near Field Communication (NFC) but, more importantly, especially given that device cost and size is a key consideration, Bluetooth (BT) will also be supported on each Wi-Fi device. Kangaroo is embedding Wi-Fi/BT combination chips in its devices to enable BT to ease the set-up of its devices. The company isn’t alone in this. Last month, Signify announced that its strategy will see it embed BT alongside its longstanding Zigbee device support, again to enable simple onboarding of devices and to support no-gateway implementations. In contrast to Kangaroo, however, Hue remains committed to Zigbee and its bridge network topology for multi-light systems.

There are plenty of attributes that competing protocols adherents would question regarding reliance on Wi-Fi within the smart home. These include security, range, battery drain, reliability, and more. In addition, the need for separate smart home gateways is diminishing as the same functionality pushes into a range of home devices including home routers and smart TVs.

We have already notedthe growing investment in delivering smart locks with Wi-Fi connectivity in the ABI Insight Smart Locks at CES Point the Way (IN-5393). Kangaroo’s success in the smart home space will be determined by myriad factors aside from its selection of Wi-Fi for device connectivity, but even so, the appeal of no-gateway, Wi-Fi-based smart home systems is being tested in more and more areas of the smart home consumer market, and the company’s efforts may yet further that change in smart home provision.

ABI Research will deliver its latest report on Smart Home Connectivity later this quarter. The report will examine the developing potential for all the key protocols in the smart home market across a wide range of devices and applications.