Belkin’s smart water assistant automatically monitors your water supply

In 2016, Belkin announced Phyn, a new company that would focus on creating products for smart water management in partnership with plumbing and infrastructure company Uponor.

Now, at CES 2018, Phyn is announcing its first consumer product, the Phyn Plus, a smart water monitoring system for homes. Customers install the Phyn Plus — which looks kind of like a glowing nuclear battery that attaches to your water main — directly into their plumbing system, where the device is able to monitor tiny changes in water pressure to track water usage and identify blockages, burst pipes, and leaks. The device is also capable of automatically shutting off water in the event of larger issues, which could save you from larger problems in the long run.

Phyn says that it’s spent the last year in pilot programs to build an accurate data set of things like toilet flushes and shower and sink flows, so that the Phyn Plus can automatically detect what’s normal activity and what isn’t. The Phyn Plus itself works by measuring changes in water pressure 240 times a second, which the company says gives it accurate enough sensing to detect even tiny pinhole leaks in your pipes. The device also includes flow and temperature sensors for making sure that, say, your pipes haven’t frozen over while you were away.

Phyn is kind of late to the game, though. Plenty of other water monitoring devices have made it to market in the two years since Belkin first announced the venture, which was originally born of a WeMo Water project in 2015. Products like Buoy or Flo look to do the same things that Phyn does, and none of those have exactly taken off as must-have devices in the same way that something like a smart thermostat has. Ultimately, anyone who can afford almost a thousand dollars for a water monitoring sensor probably isn’t someone who is too careful about how much their water bill is in the first place.

There’s also an entire cottage industry of Wi-Fi-connected water sensors that look to measure leaks after they’ve occurred and notify you about it from companies like D-Link that cost in the $30 to $50 range. And while those aren’t offering quite the same level of protection that Phyn is promising with its ability to detect leaks directly from the water main, they also cost $800 less.

Phyn’s best bet will probably be to work with water utilities directly to try and subsidize the price of the devices to get customers to install them in hopes of actually saving water (similar to what companies like Nest do with energy utilities) but for now the company hasn’t announced any plans to do so yet.

Phyn Plus will be out sometime this spring for $850, but you’ll only be able to get it installed by Uponor’s Pro Squad of “expertly trained plumbers and water specialists.” Phyn says that the Phyn Plus will be available in 30 cities with “the highest prevalence of leaks, water usage, and aggressive water” in the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas / Fort Worth, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Houston, Atlanta, Phoenix, Toronto, and Minneapolis. Installation costs will apparently vary by market, on top of the $850 for the device itself.