A well-designed home automation system can offer us a lot of convenience and can even save us money. But to get the most out of the system, we have to be prepared to make some pretty big compromises. First and foremost is privacy. To collect the necessary data, home automation systems typically rely on cameras, microphones, and other such invasive sensors.
But can we get the data we need in a way that protects the user’s privacy? Vigil Systems believes we can, and they have just announced a crowdfunding campaign to build the Squire Home Sensing Platform to prove it. It can provide high-resolution motion, presence, and room geometry information without violating the user’s privacy.
Another look at the device (📷: Vigil Systems)
Instead of cameras, Squire relies on a sophisticated combination of radar and depth sensing technology to build a spatial model of an indoor environment. By fusing data from dual 24 GHz mmWave radar modules, a 60 GHz radar sensor, and a high-resolution direct Time-of-Flight (dToF) depth sensor, the system can track movement and activity within a room while keeping identities anonymous.
This approach allows Squire to capture much richer information than typical motion sensors. Standard PIR motion detectors only indicate whether movement occurred, while single radar modules often struggle to interpret spatial structure. Squire’s sensor fusion approach allows it to construct a dynamic map of a room, tracking multiple people simultaneously and identifying their trajectories, positions, and subtle micro-movements from as far as eight meters away.
The platform is powered by the Nucleo STM32 H533RE development board, enabling all sensing and data processing to occur locally on the device. That means the system does not rely on cloud connectivity for its core functionality, ensuring that sensitive spatial data remains under the user’s control.
Developers will also gain direct access to the platform’s raw data streams, including radar tracking information, structured event logs, and 54×42 depth frames from the dToF sensor. This makes Squire particularly appealing for researchers and engineers who want to experiment with room-scale sensing, gesture recognition, or occupancy-aware automation.
Vigil Systems notes that the firmware, schematics, and developer documentation will be released after the crowdfunding campaign concludes, giving developers the tools they need to build new privacy-preserving sensing applications on top of the platform. The price and release date have not yet been announced, but you can sign up for notifications to be one of the first people to find out.