Hi everyone!
I bought an Aqara P1 Motion Sensor because everyone is saying that it’s an excellent sensor.
I am quite disappointed. The official website says that the range is ~7 meters, but I tested it, and on the “high” accuracy mode, the range isn’t longer than 1.5 meters.
Do you have the same experience?
Thank you!
Yeah, the range is definitely not anywhere near what is claimed. I’ve got a 14 foot long hall, which one Hive sensor, placed above a door at one end, used to comfortably cover. With the P1 I had to get one for each end of the hallway because each sensor only seems to cover about 6 feet.
I’m actually wondering whether it’s an issue with the placement of the sensor in the device - I’ve got both sensors mounted above doors and I’m wondering if maybe they would have a better range if they were lower down (or fixed where they are, but upside down so the sensor was at the bottom). The actual sensor seems quite small, and with the extended chin on the device to fit the double battery maybe it’s more restricted on what it can see, so to speak.
That hasn’t been my impression at all. Yours seems the more typical post.
Well, to be fair, with the exception of the range issue, everything else works really well, and the configurable timeout is excellent.
I don’t think there’s an issue with the placement. I tried different placements but the result is always the same.
I don’t understand why they declare ~7m (22 feet) on the website when it isn’t more than 1.5m (5 feet).
Yes, it works very well, but the short-range isn’t acceptable in my opinion.
I’m in the same situation, running a few of them on ZHA and while still only playing they don’t seem to stand up to the hype. That said, I have put one in my bedroom and just looked at the history for last night, it did seem to detect my presence during the night while I was sleeping which is quite impressive.
First you should know how motion sensors (any) work. When you walk to them or from them in a straight way, the detector “sees” you when you can almost touch it, but when you walk across the area it might see you even more than 7 meters from it. Also when its continuously detecting motion, the range will be shorter. When it hasnt detected any motion for some minutes, the range will be longer again.
I have exactly the same problem with the new sensors
Have the same problem. I think the product is defective and it stays in the minimum sensitivity setting, regardless of what you set it to. I have 2 of them connected to Aqara app & then to Homeassistant via HomeKit controller. Both sensors don’t see anything beyond 2.5 meters.
I tried setting the sensitivity to high again. Nothing changed.
The same is happening to me, i thought it was a zigbeemqtt problem and i remove them, and now i have problems adding them again, but the old sensor works much better than this one.
Any recommendations for motion sensors?
Thks
Anyone having issues with the battery consumption?
I put one in the kitchen on 9/23 battery indicated like 96%. I initially changed it to 60 seconds, but it want triggering so I set it back to default 30.
My wife works in the kitchen so there was a lot of activity. But by 10/2 it was at 60% battery and by 10/3, I couldn’t get it to bind to my conbee2 from 18’ away…
Am I expecting too much?
How are you all integrating your P1s into HA? I’ve used ZHA and z2m but my motion sensors won’t clear; they always read as detected.
Hmm, I am using Z2M and have one in my son’s bedroom and don’t an to have that problem.
Thank you for sharing.
If it’s not too much trouble, did you have any specific quirks in the pairing/interview process?
I talked about my issues here. It’s my first time using zigbee and I wonder if I may be doing something incorrectly: Permit new devices on Z2M, hold pairing button on the back of the device. Wait for it to pair. Once it says it’s ready, I rename it and set the “blind time / detection interval.”
One of them seemed to work for one revolution of Detected-to-Clear but then it all falls apart upon the next detection. The process has worked fine for my Aqara Mini Switches and Aqara Door/Window Sensors. I’m going to try and completely unpair my P1 Motion Sensors followed by a factory reset and see if I can get any different results.
So there wasn’t anything special I did, or needed to do, when I paired the device. I will do though that the tricky thing is having to put it in a communication mode in order to change settings. Unlike most all of my other smart devices where I can just change a setting the P1 is not always connected to you coordinator and ready to receive changes.
I think I saw you also ask about history and I’m not sure what aspect specifically you are talking about but I make sure to set the “Retain” option on my ZigBee devices in order to keep settings after a reboot, which is an MQTT thing.
I have one P1 and a bunch of the old Aqara motion sensors, with ZHA, and everything is working fine from the first sync.
Maybe you have a defective unit?
After some reading, I did really consider that I had a defective unit, which is why I opened up a second one to try it. I know it’s certainly possible that I opened two defective units in a row, but I’m sure you understand why I’m reluctant to open a third just to test that.
It’s very unlikely to be a similar defect in two units.
