BeON Home Protection System

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At a glance
Product	BeON Home Protection System (A21M100) [Website]
Summary	Innovative battery-backed up smart LED bulbs with security and safety beatures
Pros	• Provides emergency lighting during power outages for up to 4 hours • Built-in microphone listens for doorbell and smoke alarms • Learns and simulates your lighting schedule • Low power peer-to-peer architecture - no hub required
Cons	• Supports iOS only (iPhone app) • Can't set your own lighting schedule • No remote access or alerts • Doesn't connect with other sensors/systems or IFTTT • Expensive

Typical Price: $20 Buy From Amazon

Introduction

It's rare to see a new product that breaks the mold. But the BeON Home Protection System does just that. A unique, innovative design enables BeON's smart LED bulbs to not just light your home, but also address home security and safety concerns in ways that no other smart bulbs do.

BeON Home

Most smart LED bulbs embed their ZigBee or Z-Wave wireless controllers in the base of the light bulbs. Communication is done between the smart LEDs and a hub that's connected to the Internet. BeON Home has taken a completely different approach. The lighting part of the bulb really contain no intelligence - all of the "smarts" are embedded into a removable Smart Module shown in the product photo above. And no hub is required. The BeON bulbs communicate with each other and your supported iOS device using Bluetooth 4.0.

The smart module contains a microphone, memory and rechargeable battery, shown in the diagram below. These additional components enable the security and safety features we'll be discussing in this review.

BeON Home callouts

Inside

The Smart module (Model M100) is sealed, but the FCC ID number (OC3BM1871) led us to the certification documents that include the PCB board images shown below. The Bluetooth 4.0 module is a Novacomm NVC-MDSC71. If you check out the specs on the chipset, you can see that it is designed for ultra low power consumption. In the lowest power sleep mode, it consumes only 600nA and wakes up in "a few hundred microseconds".

BeON Home Smart Module Bluetooth PCB top and bottom

Setup

The setup of the BeON Home Protection System was one of the easiest I've experienced. The box arrives with three LED bulbs and three Smart Modules. The image below shows the Smart Module has 12 contacts that line up with contacts inside the light bulb. You merely insert the Smart Module into the hole in the side of the bulb and push until it clicks into place. The bulb will then light up using its built-in battery to confirm a correct connection.

BeON Home Smart Module and bulb

Next, you download the BeON Home app from the Apple App store. Currently, only iOS is supported and the app is an iPhone app. BeON Home told me an Android app is fully developed and is in beta testing. It should be available this month (December 2015). Bluetooth on your mobile device needs to be enabled.

Setup is done within the app. The app first asks you to create an account using an email address and password. Next, the setup screen shows images with captions telling you to insert the module, screw in the light bulb and turn on the light switch. You just tap the Add new bulbs icon at the bottom of the screen, and the app should detect and add your three light bulbs as shown on the right side of the composite image below.

BeON Home Setup

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