The Zuli Smartplug shrinks geo-fencing to room-fencing, for precision control of your home lighting system

Most smart-home systems rely on a central hub to manage light switches, wall plugs, door/window sensors, and other devices. Zuli has a different idea: Its smart plugs use Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) to form a mesh network. The network uses your smartphone to determine your location, so it can turn a light on when you enter a darkened room, and turn it off when you leave. The clever concept enjoyed a successful Kickstarter campaign earlier this year, and more recently caught the attention of several seed-round investors, including Logitech. Zuli Smartplugs look like most their competitors: They're wall warts that you plug into an electrical socket, and then you plug the lamp or appliance that you want to control into the wall wart. Unlike the smart plugs from Belkin and D-Link that rely on your Wi-Fi router, or similar devices that use ZigBee or Z-Wave chips and depend on a central hub (such as the Lowes Iris), Zuli Smartplugs form a proprietary mesh network of their own (more on this later). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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