Amongst all the content out there I have yet to find anyone discussing their complete house motion-activated light system. I find this very surprising. I am unsure why this is. Discussions/tutorials tend towards specific device detail rather then broader plans. Perhaps I have just failed to find it. Anyway, my question is:
Have you implemented complete house motion-activated lights?
I would very much appreciate to hear from anyone who has attempted such a system, with success or not! How is it for you? Even, how do you do it?
I am successfully running a 2 room prototype motion-activated lights system in my flat. I am in the process of renovating a house and I am approaching the stage where I have to decide if I am going to install the infrastructure for HA smart lighting. This is a big investment for me and I would be inspired to hear that other people are doing something similar.
On the chance someone fancies reading/discussing this topic here is my plan.
Requirements:
dimmers and switches that can work traditionally, even if HA server down
multiple “zones” (room divisions, not as in HA zone) in multiple rooms
lights activated by motion according to status of lux sensor and dashboard elements
rock solid and not requiring constant tinkering
My prototype system is built around smart dimmers/switches and presence detection. It works well, after 2 months it is meeting the above requirements.
In the house I plan:
mmwave sensors covering most space (FP2 and EPLite with differing frequencies to minimise interference. See here)
wired PIR sensors at all doors
wired flow meter on bathroom hot water pipe
wired ToF sensors for very local detections (eg bath water level)
wired lux sensor outside
smart dimmers (trailing edge & 12v lighting)
The wired sensors will use 12v alarm cable running to an esp32-ethernet board. USB ports will be located to power mmwave sensors.
There is overlap of functionality between mmwave, PIR and ToF but I tend to over engineer. I am considering starting with just mmwave/lux and laying the cables for PIR/ToF but hold back on buying these until I find if/where they are needed.
I have yet to decide on what type/brand of dimmers. I am in the UK so the choice is limited. I am considering:
Shelly Dimmer 2 + 3 way retractive switch - con: risk of wifi delays
Varilight pro smart + local SUPLA server - con: introduces another tech layer
Lightwave - con: expensive and limited faceplate selection
Do you mean each and every light/light-group is motion activated?
I have them for some rooms but not for others (some rooms simply don’t warrant it).
The automations take into account outside light level, whether it’s night/day etc etc etc. If I am alone it uses surrounding motion detection to cancel. If I have guests it uses timers.
I only use motion sensors (not mmWave presence detection) which also give me temp and brightness for each room.
Yes, every light. Each “zone” (room division) has one motion group and one light group.
Which areas do you judge as not warranting it? I guess in that you use PIR that you have automated lights in areas of movement and not in living areas? I know some people do that. My house is small and has no corridors or utility rooms.
I have some house-wide light scenes that set the general ambience dependant on how bright it is outside. One of those is an evening scene and I don’t want some lights changed (by motion), namely the hallway and living room. Both of these will only change based on outside light and whether the TV is playing a movie.
Never motion activated:
cupboard under the stairs
some bedrooms where they don’t want it
living room - per above
hallway - per above
utility as we leave the light on to signal something is happening (eg: washing machine / tumble drier is running). Now, if I eventually hook that up to HA…
kitchen. We’re used to having that manual and like it that way.
Edit: I should add that living room and hallway are motion activated (to a low brightness) if the house is ‘asleep’ but not when it is ‘awake’.
I just have. My apartment is not pretty big, so not much was needed.
Entrance
any PIR will do for the detection: I’m using Zigbee TuYa IH012-RT01 (cheap)
wifi lightbulb (cheap)
Kitchen
I’m testing two Zigbee TuYa ZG-204ZM (cheap) – but presence sucks, so kinda any PIR would do, as you usually move in the kitchen anyway
wifi ligthbulb (kinda expensive, for brightness and quality)
Bathroom
Aqara FP2 (expensive) - does not turn off the light on me when I’m on the toilet or behind the shower (glass? plastic?) doors → normal PIRs were not enough
Zigbee TuYa eWeLink E10 lightbulbs (cheap) – have their problems, sometimes don’t turn on, even though presence is detected (I don’t know why yet… physical turning them off and on puts them back to business)
Living room / bedroom
Zigbee Sonoff SNZB-03 PIR (cheap) - to quickly detect entrance (covers the doors part of the room)
Aqara FP2 (expensive) - covers desk and bed part of the room (works great)
wifi lightbulb (kinda expensive, for brightness and quality)
Extra notes:
I have an input_select.home_state entity with values Daytime, Redtime (lights shall be red-shifted just before bed), Bedtime (lights shall be off), Outside
I have modified the motion-activated lights blueprint to watch for the Home State (like: don’t turn on lights in the bedroom when Bedtime, even though it detects presence).
All wall switches are traditional (not smart: can just turn on/off lights)
I don’t call it whole house motion control. Nor do most folk. It’s just good automation.
Mine (too many to list but you’ll get the gist and no i do not blindly share my automations - sorry, they’re very complex and I don’t have time to be support)
Every light and device in the house (yes every wall outlet and fixture) is controllable now.
Every door and window has a sensor.
Every room has at least. One method of detecting motion and about half of my rooms also have mmwave presence detection
Lights that need to be color controlled are those that don’t need to be don’t.
All of this is boiled down to the state of a room (vacant, occupied, engaged, hold, sleep, pause - and some other special ones)
All of the rooms inputs resolve the room to one of those states.
I reduce the room down to ‘scenes’ that are matrixed against a very complex set of params including occupancy, time. Of day, home status, etc. And that drives which scene to select.
My design principles do not allow devices that don’t work without internet and the only thing I lose in a HA outage is the fancy logic. The switching still works.
Its not whole home motion control it’s just. Automation.
“house motion-activated lights” - not me thinking you want your lights to be active during earthquakes
No seriously, I also think that your topic is not widely discussed because everyone just uses what is discussed in the forums around individual motion/presence sensors and light automations to implement whatever they prefer. This also goes beyond lights but also includes garage doors, heating, or music.
Counter example: My home is pretty well connected (close to what @NathanCu described) but I have rarely any automated lighting. My family and myself prefer push buttons, which in turn switch scenes and devices for indirect lighting etc. We only have a few motion activated lights and a few more non-motion turned-off-lights
I’m in the UK as well, and I went the route of putting a lot (I mean a lot) of ethernet cable in. This allows me to have most of my controllers wired.
As for the lights, I went with Gledopto downlights that work on both Zigbee and RF. This means that they can be controlled by the remotes in the event the zigbee network is down (ie. the computer system). I have not used the RF Wall type controllers as for me the remotes are for an emergency.
I also have a fair bit of LED strips running WLED, but as these are mostly for accent lighting I did not consider a secondary emergency control method.
I am going to try and avoid putting any controllers on the walls as I want to try and make it properly smart - the lights come on based on what you need. I got things worked out in my head, just need to translate them to automations and scripts - something which is taking me a bit longer as I don’t have much experience with Home Assistant (previously used OpenHAB for several years).
I should add that the place was refurbished and has concrete walls. As such I did run either conduit to where wall controllers would potentially be placed, meaning that they can be added at a later date easily.
@jchh, nice. I have the ability to “freeze” a rooms lights state if you do not want room divisions flashing on/off when a room is occupied (all freezes are reset when unoccupied for x mins), and a toggle so that room divisions act in unison as one room. And now I will add meter plugs (better still, sockets) on the tv and white goods to set a scene or signal operation (eg washing finished). Great stuff.
@DvdNwk, thanks. I am very pleased to hear that the FP2 does work in a bathroom. I have been using one for testing in my living room and it does seem very good. We had one incident last night where it stopped working for a couple of minutes - no network error so not sure what happened. It was during a thunderstorm but I have no idea if that might be responsible. I assume there are logs to look at which I will get round to if it happens again. Otherwise it has been solid. The zones work great.
@NathanCu, thanks very much. Sensors are my biggest concern so it is good to hear you are successfully using multiple mmwave sensors. For a test I put an FP2 (64MHz) and an EPLite (24MHz) with two zones each, facing each other in the same room, both controlling the same two motion groups, and they worked fine. And yes, everything local and set to continue upon HA failure. If I unplug my HA Green in my teting the smart switches and dimmers continue to work as normal. Automation. Got it!
@ThomDietrich, ha ha, no, not many earth quakes in London. Although we did get one very very very mild tremor some time around the beginning of the century which was very exciting for those of us who were awake and sober. So, your lack of motion detected lights is a preference rather than the inability to implement. Unfortunately, I have household members who are particularly unfocused on turning lights off. I come home to find the flat lit and empty. Our testing the automated lights has been a joy nd a welcome removal of tension! Thanks for your response.
@SJ2005, alright geezer! Ethernet? Interesting. What controllers do you use via ethernet? I didn’t know this was available and I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean by controllers tbh. And yes, I am in the fortunate position of being able to cable what I need (luckily within stud walls not concrete) which is primarily the purpose of my question. Thanks very much.
Actually, I’ve never moved the FP2 since installed (I just got rid of the unnecessary Sonoff). It works great, no issues.
Even if it sometimes turns on the light unnecessarily (I’m guessing: because the door has a window and is next to the kitchen), that doesn’t bother me (u have to stand really close to the window).
For some of the LED lighting I am using a DigQuad with a POE splitter to provide the 5v and ethernet signal. The DigQuad is connected to a bigger power supply for when the LED’s are on which is handled by a relay ( Quinled-Dig-Quad: Using a power supply relay - quinled.info)
A range of POE mmwave sensors with zones and differing frequencies would be ideal for me. I see the EP1-Pro will take the HiLink LD2450. I wonder if there is a 64GHz sensor to go in it? Can’t see one listed. If only there was a POE FP2!
All very helpful. I think now I am going to put ethernet cable down for the mmwave sensors rather than USB power sockets. I can power the USB only sensors with a POE->USB adapter while I wait for the future. Thanks very much.
