Athom Human Presence Sensor mmwave (share your experiences)

ESPHome
121

@bryanw Since 2024.5.4 (May 28th release) OTA is fixed for me!

I needed to retry the OTA installation several times, but it then worked.
See release notes ESPHome 2024.5.0 - 15th May 2024 — ESPHome

with the fix “Also reduces fw size.”
[helpers] Move Base64 string to cpp by gabest11 · Pull Request #6819 · esphome/esphome · GitHub

Still, if the latest OTA really doesn’t work for you, then do a 2-step OTA procedure:
First, install a minimal version with OTA.
Second, install the full version with OTA.
Don’t forget to change your friendly_name, name and key.
Note: sometimes i had to retry the update several times until it went through.

Step 1 - Minimal OTA config

substitutions:
  name: athom-presence-sensor-my-id
  friendly_name: My Nice Athom
  
esphome:
  name: ${name}
  name_add_mac_suffix: false
  friendly_name: ${friendly_name}

esp8266:
  board: esp8285
ota:
logger:

api:
  encryption:
    key: XYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZ

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password

Step 2 - Full OTA config

substitutions:
  name: athom-presence-sensor-my-id
  friendly_name: My Nice Athom

packages:
  Athom_Technology.Presence_Sensor: github://athom-tech/athom-configs/athom-presence-sensor.yaml

esphome:
  name: ${name}
  name_add_mac_suffix: false
  friendly_name: ${friendly_name}

api:
  encryption:
    key: XYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZXYZ

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
1 Like
122

@Hell255 - Thank you for sharing this information! I noticed my Athom sensors updated fine now. :slight_smile: Glad it was fixed.

1 Like
123

Thanks for sharing this, but even with the base config and trying it a BUNCH of times including resetting the device - I didn’t have any luck.
I think I’m going to have to factory reset my two units, adopt them, and then update their configs. :frowning:

1 Like
124

I have 2 of these. One in my living room and one in my basement media area. Main purpose is to turn off the lights/tv when no one is there and they are left on. I am overall very happy with the devices. using blakadder’s config.

I have several different esp based presence sensors (screek, athom, apollo, seeedstudio kit). The best in my opinion on accuracy/true positives/false positives are the screeks. I haven’t played much with the apollo one yet. The athoms are good enough and reliable enough that I put them to use right away with minimal tweaking to get the result I was looking for. I would recommend also looking into the screek products (I am using two 2A’s and one 1U). They don’t however have a PIR if that is something you specifically are wanting.

125

Thanks for sharing your experience! I was considering the screek devices for a time, then decided to just build the rest of my presence sensors using ESP32 boards and sensors from Ali Express.

The “homemade” presence sensors work well now, but required a LOT more tuning that the Athom sensor. Athom sensors work really well and require minimal setup. Glad to hear the screek are pretty good too. I believe the Apollo is highly rated & you’ll find that works very well too.