IKEA’s trio of cheap smart home sensors could save you from domestic disaster

IKEA wants to make your smart home ever smarter with the addition of a trio of new sensors.

Called the Parasoll, Vallhorn and Badring (which Ring is surely smarting about), the sensors are designed to detect motion and pick up on issues like water leaks, giving you real-time notifications of any problem that happens while you’re away from your property.

Parasoll (€9.99, around $11 / £9 / AU$17) is a sensor that’s mounted on a door or window to detect when it’s opened, and is designed to be very compact and discreet, warning you if an intruder is breaking into your home.

Then there’s the Vallhorn (€7.99, around $9 / £7 / AU$13) which is a traditional (wireless) motion sensor that detects movement, lighting up when it does so (with adjustable colors and intensity levels for that lighting).

Finally, Badring (€9.99, around $11 / £9 / AU$17) is the water leakage sensor. Place this near a pipe or other potential source of a leak (like a washing machine) and it can pick up any problem right from the off, sounding an alarm or sending a notification to your phone, allowing you to act quickly to get the leak sorted.

(Image credit: IKEA)

All of these sensors are relatively compact and designed so they don’t stand out, and IKEA promises that they’re user-friendly and generally easy to get to grips with.

Any of the Parasoll, Vallhorn and Badring sensors can operate as a standalone product, or can be integrated into your current smart home setup (they use Zigbee).

Naturally, the sensors can be hooked up to IKEA’s own Dirigera smart home hub (complete with its own app), as you might expect.

Availability may vary from region to region, but IKEA says the Parasoll and Vallhorn will be on shelves from January 2024, but Badring won’t be available to purchase until April 2024. We’ll update this article as soon as we get official pricing for the US, UK and Australia.

(Image credit: IKEA)

Analysis: Affordable peace of mind

These are useful (and previously rumored) additions to IKEA’s smart home line-up, particularly the Parasoll and Badring. Having the latter on hand to guard against any mini-floods ravaging your home while you’re away makes for some extra peace of mind, for sure.

Sadly, we don’t yet know the US, UK or Australia pricing for these new sensors, but their European pricing is affordable, so we’re expecting them to similarly be in impulse buy territory when that does become official.

Building out its range further, IKEA recently unveiled another nifty smart home gadget, namely a smart RGB LED light strip called the Ormanäs which also hooks up via Zigbee to IKEA’s Dirigera hub.

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