Numera releases combination life safety-PERS hub

CARLSBAD, Calif.—Nortek Security and Control on March 31 announced its new Numera Home Safety Hub, an expanded way to monitor the activity levels of PERS users.

“Activity is a strong indicator of health and wellness, and that—to measure it accurately in the home—[necessitates] a combination of both passive and active [monitoring],” Tim Smokoff, group vice president of health & wellness, Nortek Security & Control, told Security Systems News.

As Smokoff defined it, active monitoring is using a sensor—such as a PERS unit—to track the activity-level of a user. Passive monitoring, on the other hand, uses sensors in around the home to understand aspects of the user's lifestyle. “You can put [a] door sensor on your refrigerator door, and you would know that the refrigerator is being opened and closed a certain number of times a day,” Smokoff explained.

The Numera Home Safety Hub is “really a cross-section between a traditional PERS console and a security panel,” Smokoff said. “We wanted to do it in such a way that we could also tie it into the EverThere platform.” EverThere, part of Numera's Libris mPERS solution, tracks and pairs activity levels of its user with information from connected health devices.

“I'm sure that there will be people that will say, 'I don't want people knowing how many times I went into the bathroom, or how many times I opened the refrigerator door,'” Smokoff said. “We do take a very active approach to how privacy is managed, and we really leave it up to the individual to decide what information is being captured, who's using that information, and who it's being shared with.”

“It's not meant to displace the security system,” Smokoff said. In fact,  the hub works alongside an existing security system. It also works with 2GIG sensors.

The hub was originally slated to be a newer version of a Nortek Security and Control PERS console. “That development was started prior to the acquisition of Numera. With Numera we saw an opportunity to integrate that with the EverThere platform, and further expand the events and the information that was being captured,” Smokoff said.

“This project was started a little over a year ago. The acquisition of Numera was completed last July, and the Numera group picked it up … in the summer time,” Smokoff said. “This product will be commercially available late April/early May.”

Numera will be showing off the hub, EverThere, and how these offerings fit into the connected home, at ISC West.