Anyone got candidates for small inexpensive illuminance sensors without cables?
I’m open to almost any protocol: I’m running Zigbee, Z-Wave, BLE, BT Proxy, BTHome, Thread/Matter. (And well, Wi-Fi and Tasmota too, but too likely to need power cables.)
I do dislike having all the batteries to maintain, but I really do want some small little devices that can provide lux information, e.g., to see if a light has actually been turned on/off by an RF-remote. And a couple other quirky light-control situations.
I’m assuming for battery life, that they’d need to sleep normally, and only check in periodically with a reading.
I haven’t seen any illuminance-only sensors, but that function is often included with other types of sensors. Anybody know of any really cheap ones? As long as they’ve got the lux reading.
It is possible to make one for under USD$10 from parts bought on AliExpress. If you can’t design it and build it yourself, I’m sure you could hire someone to do it for you.
Ikea is selling ~9Eur sensor, i have one, Matter over Thread.
https://www.ikea.com/ro/ro/p/myggspray-senzor-miscare-wireless-smart-30624695/
They may be more expensive, but the most economical way to go in the long run may be to get something that combines several sensors - Philips Hue, for example, do light, movement and temperature in one device.
I’ve been using a few of these for about a year now, work fine:
Not tried these but they are really cheap:
Only problem with devices like that is that they only report lux updates when motion is sensed. That is true for most brands, since they are primarily a motion sensor & the lux part is just an extra perk.
Safer to go with a dedicated lux sensor for places where physical presence might not always occur.
I’m a big fan of these. Very accurate and last a long time on battery (if I would need to guess over a year) but increasingly hard to find. Ignore the Homekit, it is Zigbee. I have it on ZHA:
To get a sense of the reporting frequency, this is now, late summer evening, outside (shielded from rain by a thin transparent plastic cover):
@Edwin_D - Hmm, that looked pretty good, until I saw current pricing: north of US $30. Hoping to find something cheaper (and still off-the-shelf). Should be possible with newer devices; we shall see.
I’d like to check out the one suggested by @Holdestmade (about $5), but still trying to figure out how to order more than quantity 1, because Ali keeps trying to give me come-on-in new-user pricing of ONLY quantity 1.
You didn’t specify what you consider inexpensive but based on your last past, I’m guessing that you’re looking for something sub-$30.
I use the Aqara FP300 and it seems to do everything besides its main function quite well, including illuminance. It’s my main illuminance sensor but it’s $50.
There’s the Aqara Light Sensor T1 but it looks like you have to order it from China. Seems like you can get it for ~$10 however based on a quick search. I was looking into it previously since I was also searching for a cheap illuminance-only sensor but I never ended up getting one so I can’t speak to its performance.
You might have some luck checking the Zigbee2MQTT database and filtering for illuminance sensors. There are a lot of options. Same for the Matter devices database, although it looks like there are way fewer Matter illuminance sensors.
That’s good to know, thanks. The only other motion sensor I know which does this is the FP300 mentioned above. None of the other motion sensors I have do this.
They once used to be around €12 in Europe until China had to pay import fees. Now thy should be around €20 here. So if you’re in the US and need to pay triple the original price, then I think you need to thank your president for that.