Smart home sensors allow you to monitor everything from leaking water and broken windows to temperature fluctuations and motion. Most sensors are DIY-friendly ; you can set them up relatively quickly, and you probably won't need anything besides your smartphone for the onboarding. Unfortunately, a majority of these sensors are battery-powered, leaving you responsible for a recharge or replacement when the cells start depleting. But if the ingenuity of a Georgia Tech engineering team led by Yibo Fu is officially put into production, the future of sensor power could look very different.

Fu's team came up with a simple way of localizing home automations via ultrasonic frequencies, and they're calling this experimental platform SoundOff . Instead of using batteries, Wi-Fi receivers, and other complicated tech, Fu and his colleagues created a penny-sized metal disc with specialized notches that mounts on a 3D-printed base.…