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 first radar ping to a secured vehicle — the complete sequence, what triggers each stage, and what the system does at every moment.
Orbit's default state. The mmWave radar pings every 100ms. Cameras off. AI off. Speaker off. Power draw is minimal — 14+ days on internal battery. Nothing happens until the radar detects a human energy signature within the 5-metre proximity zone across a configurable number of consecutive pings. Passing cars, animals, and distant movement don't trigger this threshold.
Radar has confirmed a human presence. All four cameras activate and begin capturing to the 10-second rolling RAM buffer — not NVMe, to preserve storage. Vision AI begins classifying behaviour. Audio classification listens simultaneously. The pre-event buffer runs from this moment, capturing everything before any threat is confirmed.
Radar, vision AI, and audio must simultaneously confirm suspicious behaviour above their thresholds. A pedestrian walking past fails — radar detects presence but vision classifies normal movement and audio hears nothing. Someone loitering while testing a door handle passes all three. Single-layer triggers produce nothing. This architecture is why Orbit has a meaningfully lower false positive rate than single-sensor systems.
A calm directed voice responds with a message specific to the classified behaviour. Loitering gets a different message than reaching. Directed audio — audible to whoever is near the car, not broadcast to the neighbourhood. The owner receives a push notification simultaneously but does not need to authorise anything. The system acts on its own.
An encrypted LoRa alert — classified behaviour, confidence, timestamp — reaches every nearby Orbit unit in under one second. No internet. No server. No raw footage. Receiving units raise local detection sensitivity. The whole lot responds before the threat has moved to another vehicle. More nearby units means faster and stronger network effect.
If the person remains after CalmVoice, the 120dB siren fires automatically. No owner authorisation required. The system escalates on its own. The goal at every stage is identical — make the risk calculation unfavourable enough that they leave before contact with the vehicle.
The pre-event RAM buffer is written to encrypted NVMe. Detection timeline, behaviour classification, and system response log are compiled into a structured report while deterrence is still active. The report is complete before the incident ends.
In most cases it never reaches the siren. The person leaves after CalmVoice or earlier. Your car is exactly as you left it. The incident is logged on-device. You may never even open the app. That is the product working as intended — not an alarm that fired, but a break-in that did not happen.
Honest note
Orbit does not guarantee no break-in will ever occur. A determined person who accepts the risk can break into any vehicle. What Orbit does is make your car a significantly worse target than an unprotected one, at the earliest possible moment in the decision chain.
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.
The hardware
Every component was chosen for a specific reason. Here's what's in Orbit and why.
SwiftFile
SwiftFile auto-compiles everything from a confirmed incident into a structured document. Here's exactly what it contains and how it works.
About Aerix
Arnav, in San Francisco, and Dhruv, in London — cousins, co-founders, and both robbed within months of each other. Shirts, clothes, cash, cameras, all of it gone. The footage existed both times. Nobody was caught either time. We spent two years building the answer we couldn't find anywhere else.
Vehicle break-ins happen every 15 seconds in the United States. The clearance rate is 13%. Not because the footage doesn't exist — it does. Because footage after the fact almost never changes the outcome.
We didn't set out to build a better dashcam. We set out to build something that prevents the break-in from happening. Not a product that documents your loss. A product that makes sure there is no loss.
Every decision at Aerix runs through one filter: does this help stop theft, or doesn't it. No subscriptions that gate features. No data stored in the cloud that could hold footage hostage. Architecture enforces our values. Not policy.
Orbit works until it physically cannot. No forced upgrades. No features locked behind paywalls. You buy it once. We spend the rest of our time making sure it keeps working.
Where Orbit works
City parking lots and garages
High foot traffic, low lighting, few witnesses. This is where most break-ins happen and where the mesh is most powerful.
Overnight street parking
The radar pings every 100ms through the night drawing minimal power. By morning your car is exactly as you left it.
Travel and unfamiliar areas
Airport lots, hotel garages, cities you don't know. The cellular plan sends push notifications wherever you are.
Valuables you can't always hide
SmartHide scans the interior before you walk away and alerts you to anything left visible.
Walking back to your car at night
SafeWalk uses the mesh to monitor your path back. You're never walking back alone.
Children and pets in the car
HeatSense monitors occupancy and cabin temperature, escalating to emergency services automatically.
SwiftFile in action
Auto-compiled the moment an incident is confirmed. Here's a real mockup of the structure.
Owner-controlled — nothing shared without explicit authorisation
Pre-event buffer — captures before the trigger, not just after
Zero-knowledge — Aerix cannot read it. The key is on your phone
Auto-compiled — detection log, timeline, evidence frames, one document
RippleWarn
When Orbit detects a threat, an encrypted signal ripples to every nearby unit in under one second. No server. No internet required. Pure peer-to-peer.
Common questions
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