Ooma's Home Monitoring System will call 911 for you
Ooma's sensors can dial 911 if they detect that something's wrong.
Ooma's motion sensor.
As you might expect of a smart home system, Ooma's sensors will notify you if they detect something out of the ordinary. The sensors won't just notify you, though. Ooma's motion detector, water detector, or door and window sensor can each call 911 themselves.
Ooma made a name for itself with the Telo -- a box that plugs into your router and provides you with a home phone service. Telo routes calls over the internet, and you'll need the $90 gadget to make use any of Ooma's new trio of smart home devices.
Introduced at CES today in Las Vegas, Ooma's three sensors -- a $35 motion detector, a $30 leak sensor and a $25 door and window sensor -- communicate with the Telo using Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication. DECT is the same tech used by ordinary cordless telephones.
You can set the sensors to Home or Away mode and if they detect something amiss, they'll alert you by phone, push notifications, email or text messages depending on your preferences. The sensors can also call 911 directly from your Telo. It'll connect with the dispatcher closest to your home, and can send through the address as well.
You'll likely need to pay a monthly fee for this service. If you're already using Ooma's premium service for your Telo, you can add as many sensors to your system as you want without adding to your $10 a month fee. If you're using Ooma's free basic service, you can use one sensor for free, but two or more costs $6 a month.
There's no option to use multiple sensors for free and skip the 911 monitoring. That's a shame, but it's also the only thing that makes Ooma's smart home sensors at all unique. The sensors themselves are reasonably priced, so if you already have a Telo, it might make sense to make your home phone smarter.