We want the smart home to see us without watching us, and Shelly just got closer to that than almost anyone. The new Presence Gen4 sensor, announced today for $84.99, uses mmWave radar to track up to ten bodies moving through a room, their presence, their motion, even what they're doing, and it never turns on a lens. No camera. No recording. No subscription. That is the razor clam in this spec sheet, and it matters more than the price tag.
This is the same company that just dropped a $50 subscription-free security camera last month, so Shelly is clearly building a philosophy here, not just a product line. The Presence Gen4 slots into that ecosystem as the quiet observer: it knows you're in the kitchen, it knows you walked past the couch, it knows the dog is under the desk, but it cannot show you a single frame of footage. For anyone who has ever hesitated before mounting a camera in their living room because guests shouldn't feel surveilled, this is the honest compromise. You get presence detection for automation, lights that follow you, heating that adjusts to occupancy, alerts when a room is empty, without the creepy feeling that your home is building a visual diary. It is exactly the kind of weird, narrow solution that makes you wonder why everyone else is still trying to sell you another lens.
But let's be specific about what this actually does, because the launch copy will try to sell you magic. The sensor detects up to ten people simultaneously, distinguishes between humans and pets, and can tell if someone is standing, sitting, walking, or lying down. That last one is the detail I keep circling back to: activity classification without a camera. If you have ever tried to build a smart home routine around "if someone is lying on the couch for more than 30 minutes, turn off the lights," you know how hard that is to do with a standard motion sensor. A PIR sensor sees a flicker of heat and assumes you're still there. It does not know you fell asleep. The Presence Gen4 knows. That is the difference between a home that reacts and a home that understands.
The question, as always with new smart home hardware, is whether the software keeps up with the sensor. Shelly has a decent track record with local processing and open integrations, which matters more than the hardware specs for anyone who wants this thing to talk to Home Assistant or a DIY automation script. The $84.99 price is reasonable for a radar sensor of this capability, comparable to the Aqara FP2, but without the subscription pressure. And it ships now, not next quarter, which is refreshingly concrete for a category that usually promises delivery "later this year." I want to see how well it handles open-plan spaces, how quickly it detects a person re-entering a room, and whether the activity classification works reliably in low-light conditions where radar should actually excel. That is the detail to watch: radar is great at seeing through darkness, but bad at telling you who someone is. Shelly is betting that for most home automation, you do not need to know who, you just need to know that someone is there. I think they are right, and I think this is the sensor that finally makes that bet feel like a finished product instead of a prototype.