Bethesda’s Dwellwell is using sensor technology for home maintenance

For three-time founder Dan Simpkins, finding the next big idea is a delicate balance between dreaming and discovering.

“I actually, as an entrepreneur, have a saying that you have to go over the line to see the line,” Simpkins, one of the DC area’s 2021 RealLIST Connectors, told Technical.ly. “Essentially, you have to imagine yourself in the world of science fiction and turn back around and look at where that line between reality and science fiction is, in order to figure out where to take the future, where to go from there.”

You might know the Bethesda, Maryland-based Simpkins from his voice-over-internet services trailblazer SALIX or smart TV originator Hillcrest Labs. His latest endeavor moves beyond IoT tech for the smart home and into creating the smart home.

Simpkins founded Dwellwell, a residential property management technology platform, alongside cofounder and CTO Chuck Gritton in 2018. Dwellwell, which publicly launches today, is a smart home technology “check-engine” device that helps owners keep track of their properties and, potentially, prevent costly repairs.

Simpkins got the idea, he said, after experiencing flooding in his home from frozen pipes.

“There are 100 million cars on the road and all of them have a check engine light,” Simpkins said. “And there are 130 million homes in the US and none of them have a check engine light.”

The Dwellwell team. (Courtesy photo)

The Dwellwell device is a comprehensive and high-density IoT sensor for homes, also known as Dwell nodes. One gets placed roughly every 300 square feet (about eight would be used for a 2,4000 square-foot home, the average size in the US) to monitor the home. The device collects data on components like temperature, humidity, volatile compounds, carbon monoxide, vibration and light. It also incorporates an acoustic sensor for sound, although Simpkins noted it does not collect human voices. The information is sent to an edge AI processor, which creates insights based on what the sensors pick up — for instance, an unusual noise being attributed to a faucet drip. That way, Simpkins said, homeowners can address the small problem they may not have noticed before it becomes too costly or damaging.

“A lot of IoT technology has previously focused on commercial buildings, office buildings or mixed-use buildings,” Simpkins said. “This is the first time that a company is focusing all of its energy on a comprehensive, multi-sensor analytics platform for residential maintenance and applications.”

The company currently has 13 full-time employees, and Simpkins said that it’s completed three angel rounds for funding — though he did not disclose the amount. At present, Dwellwell is primarily focused on multifamily operators and single-family rental owners. The device will send updates to the owners and even try to help them solve the issue, Simpkins said.

In 2022, the company aims to complete two pilots: one with a multifamily and one with a single-family customer. As maintenance and repair make up a significant percentage of operating expenses, Simpkins thinks the Dwellwell device could save owners up to 25% percent in repair costs.

“There’s a lot of knowledge in the engineering world that the longer you wait to fix something, the more expensive the repair becomes,” Simpkins said, adding: “So what we realized is that the sooner we can tell our customers that something has gone wrong, the faster they can fix it and, ultimately, the lower the overall cost.”