Full breakdown
We put every skeptical question, every technical detail, all the research, and the full privacy architecture in one place. If you want to understand exactly what Orbit is and isn't before giving us your email, this is the page for that.
The science
We didn't build Orbit's features based on what sounded good. We built them around what the research says actually changes a thief's decision. Here's that research — in full, with sources.
422 incarcerated burglars surveyed across North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio. The most cited primary research on burglar decision-making in criminology. Findings: the vast majority of burglars actively checked for security systems before attempting entry. Finding one caused most to move to a different target. Even impulsive, unplanned burglars said they would stop mid-attempt upon discovering an active system. The study specifically highlighted the value of alarms, cameras, and visible surveillance in preventing burglaries — not documenting them.
Source: Kuhns, J.B. et al. "Understanding Decisions to Burglarize from the Offender's Perspective." UNC Charlotte. Funded by the Alarm Industry Research and Education Foundation.
Five years of police data across Newark, NJ. One of the most rigorous analyses of alarm system effectiveness ever published. Key finding: neighborhoods where security systems were densely installed experienced significantly fewer burglaries than surrounding areas. Critically, the deterrent effect extended beyond individual protected properties — one alarmed home reduced crime risk for the surrounding block. The study concluded that alarm systems make a dwelling less attractive to would-be intruders without displacing burglaries to nearby homes. This is the research foundation behind RippleWarn — every unit strengthens the whole network.
Source: Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice, in cooperation with the Newark Police Department.
A federal government study across Multnomah County, Oregon reviewing police reports, permit files, and personal interviews. Finding: alarmed residences and commercial properties experienced significantly lower rates of robbery and burglary than unprotected properties. Alarm systems were evaluated as effective crime deterrents. The study also identified false alarms as a significant drain on police resources — which is why Orbit requires radar, vision AI, and audio to all confirm simultaneously before anything fires. Every response is real.
Source: Office of Justice Programs, National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Multnomah County, Oregon.
Documented across commercial and retail security deployments: directed audio messages take deterrence to a categorically different level than alarms or lights alone. While criminals may expect and ignore a generic siren, hearing a calm voice that specifically acknowledges their presence and behaviour compels a different response. Security professionals note that verbal warnings cause suspects to leave before any physical confrontation or escalation is needed. A siren is noise anyone can habituate to. A voice that knows what you're doing is something different. That's the entire reasoning behind CalmVoice.
Source: Security Industry Association, "How Audio Surveillance Can Help to Counter Emerging Threats." securityindustry.org.
The research also consistently shows that layered combinations outperform any single measure in isolation. A generic alarm alone performs worse than a combination of surveillance, visible deterrence, and an active response system. Orbit requires all three layers — radar, vision AI, and audio — to confirm simultaneously, then responds with voice deterrence, mesh network activation, and evidence capture all at once. That layered architecture is exactly what the research says works.
Inside the system
From the moment someone approaches your car to the moment they leave — every decision Orbit makes, in order.
mmWave radar pulses while the device sleeps. Zero camera, zero AI, minimal power. The moment it detects a human energy signature within range, the rest of the system wakes up.
Cameras activate. Vision AI classifies what the person is doing. Audio classification listens for handle rattles, glass taps, impact sounds. All three must agree before anything fires. A pedestrian walking past fails this check. Someone loitering and testing your door doesn't.
A directed voice specific to the behaviour detected addresses the person near your car. Not a siren. Not a generic warning. The psychological effect of a system that knows exactly what you're doing is categorically different from an alarm everyone ignores.
An encrypted alert travels to every Orbit unit within range in under one second. No internet. No server. Every car in the lot raises its alertness simultaneously. The threat has nowhere obvious to move to next.
If the person remains after CalmVoice, a 120dB siren activates automatically. You receive a push notification simultaneously. The system escalates on its own. The goal at every stage is the same — make the risk calculation unfavourable enough that they leave.
The 10-second pre-event buffer — captured in RAM before the trigger fired — is written to encrypted storage. Detection timeline, behaviour classification, and system response are compiled into a structured report. It's ready before the incident is even over.
In most cases it never gets past Stage 1. The person leaves. Your car is exactly as you left it. The incident is logged on-device. You may never even open the app. That's the product working.
Honest answers
Good skepticism is healthy. We'd rather answer every hard question now than have you find out something we didn't tell you after you've bought the product. These are the things we'd want to know if we were in your position.
Privacy architecture
Most companies say they protect your privacy. We built a system where protecting it isn't a choice we make — it's a technical fact. Here's exactly how it works.
When you first pair Orbit with your phone, your device generates a unique cryptographic key. That key never leaves your phone — not during setup, not during use, not ever. Aerix doesn't receive a copy. Our servers don't hold one. There is no mechanism by which we could access your footage even if we wanted to — or were legally compelled to. A court order directed at Aerix gets them nothing, because there is nothing for Aerix to hand over.
All footage is stored on the NVMe drive inside the Orbit unit, encrypted with your key. It never uploads automatically. It never syncs in the background. The only way footage moves anywhere is if you explicitly initiate a SwiftFile share — and even then, you choose where it goes and who receives it. The evidence belongs to you, not to us.
There's a physical switch on the device that electrically disconnects all cameras from the power supply. Not in firmware. Not in software. A literal electrical break at the hardware level. When it's in the off position the cameras cannot capture anything regardless of what the software says. You can verify this yourself with a multimeter. It's not a software toggle that can be overridden by an update — it's a physical circuit break.
When RippleWarn propagates a threat alert to nearby units, it sends a semantic description — the type of behaviour detected, the confidence level, the time — not raw footage, not biometric data, not any information that identifies the person. Nearby units use that description to adjust their local sensitivity. No footage ever travels across the mesh. No personal data is shared between units.
We run minimal blind relay servers for push notifications — getting an alert from your Orbit to your phone when you're not in Bluetooth range. Those servers see a device ID and a signal that something happened. They do not see footage, location, or any content. They don't store anything. The relay passes the notification through and forgets it. That's the complete list of what our infrastructure does.
Privacy policies can change. Architectures are harder to change — especially when they're the reason the product works. The zero-knowledge design isn't a feature we added to make the marketing better. It's the foundation the product is built on. We built Orbit this way because it's the only version we'd personally use.
Common questions
Ready?
Early access. One email at launch. No marketing before that.
Get Early AccessNo spam. No marketing. One email at launch.