Brett Jurgens, CEO, would actually say that Notion is all about home awareness, a realm that does in fact encompass security. Every sensor in the kit also detects when doors are open, the temperature of a room, water leaks, lights, and smoke alarms. You simply name each sensor in your setup so the software can alert you to whatever you want to know, and the $199 kit comes with three sensors and a bridge to coordinate them all. As Jurgens tells me, it’s like what your car has given your for ages – critical information about the its own status. The unit itself is filled with seven different sensors within the main body, and Notion has custom built them all. It’s all designed to run through a mobile app that displays every piece of information about your home. Jurgens and his cofounder Ryan Margoles, CTO, grew up together in a town about 30 miles away from Denver, and they each had entrepreneurial parents. After college, when they each had their own homes and families, Margoles had a smoke alarm go off while he was at work. Unbeknownst to him, it was only the slow been from the battery dying, but he had a new puppy at home and was understandably distraught. Not only that, the puppy got horribly frightened from the sharp noises, at which point Margoles told Jurgens: That was all she wrote, and they set off to make the world’s best smoke alarm. But after about five months of research they realized people wouldn’t ant to pay a lot for a high tech smoke alarm. The team had a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign not long ago where they raised a total $281,655. They offered backers the opportunity to pay extra to be a part of their beta testing phase, which is what they shipped following the Kickstarter. The full launch is coming up in late July, where the remainder of the backers and presale customers will get their Notion products. We’ve seen a lot of companies try to do this whole home automation thing, but Notion is going so far beyond automatic lights, locks, and security. It’ll definitely be interesting to see how this concept of home awareness shapes the future of the smart home, and as the results of their Kickstarter would tell, I’m not the only person who feels that way.
