Linksys mesh router’s motion tracking system can now work with other smart home appliances

Linksys Aware – the company’s subscription service that uses its Wi-Fi mesh systems to detect motion in your home – is getting even smarter with a new update that will allow routers to use the Internet to connect to other fixed smart home products to track movement in your home more accurately.

The original Aware motion detection system detects how Wi-Fi signals reflect in your home between routers in a mesh system. Movement naturally interferes with these signals, allowing routers to act as a motion detection configuration without the need for any additional hardware.

Linksys is now adding support to take advantage of other smart home products connected to the Internet – such as speakers, smart switches and thermostats – to serve as additional communication points, allowing the motion detection system to function in a larger area and, eventually, find more specific locations where movement is being detected. With the new update, users will be able to see when a movement has been detected near a specific device (such as the Apple TV in their living room or the smart plug in their hallway).

And since the configuration depends only on your existing internet connections, it should work with most third-party devices without requiring any software updates (the Linksys app will let you know which devices are compatible).

The Linksys Aware update will be released in the United States in March / April, with additional versions reaching the rest of the world in the following months. The price will still be set at $ 2.99 per month or $ 24.99 per year, with the option of a 90-day free trial.

Along with updated features for Linksys Aware, the company also announced its new AXE8400 mesh router system, the first to support Wi-Fi 6E. The AXE8400 is intended for customers with high Wi-Fi usage, not basic customers, and is priced accordingly: a single router costs $ 449.99, a two-pack $ 849.99 and a three-pack $ 1,199.99.

These prices give you a lot of routers, however. Each AXE8400 unit is a tri-band router that supports 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz networks and can cover up to 3,000 square feet. There is a 5 Gbps WAN port – widely prepared for the future right now – along with four additional 1 Gbps LAN ports and a USB 3.0 port. Linksys says the AXE8400 should be able to handle more than 65 devices comfortably, all sharing the same bandwidth at the same time. The AXE8400 is also compatible with other Linksys Intelligent Mesh routers, so you can fit them into your existing mesh configuration if you are already a Linksys customer.

The Linksys AXE8400 will be available in spring / summer 2021.