šŸŖ‘ DIY Zigbee bed/chair occupancy sensor

If you keep doors open, you need to move once you enter. Light will swich on, just not so fast. But if doors was closed it is reactive as freezer. You dont see darkness at all.

Then for exiting, of you open door and go away it shuts down. Problem if doors are kept open and someone enter-leave room, light will stay for too long. But you can reduce pir to 1min for open doors, and keep 15min for closed door.

One more problem is that PIR does not register movement inside shower (in my case). So while someone is in the cabin you dont want to touch the door. I solved it by adding one more doors sensor in shower cabin :slight_smile:

Current solution works almost good enough for my wife :slight_smile: And once you control light yourself you get all the perks: you have cool white for daytime, warm white for evening and dim light during the night.

For those intending to use this as a bed sensor, please post a follow-up with placement details and sensitivity. I am hoping to put it between a king size mattress and box spring.

Thanks.

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Does anyone know this type of pressure sensor would work on a mesh chair, in which you technically sit ā€œon airā€? I guess I would tape it to the underside of the mesh.

Or does the sensor need to have a hard surface underneath it to actually work?

Afaik it needs a hard surface

thats what i would guess tooā€¦
The sensor its not that expensive so I guess It wont hurt to try!

works with aqara gateway?

I use ZHA but the gateway should also work as it just passes the open/closed state to HA.

This is great, and Iā€™ll prob order one. Though I run a hybrid zigbee z-wave usb stick, all my sensors to date are z-wave. Has anyone done the same thing with z-wave successfully? If so, what sensor?

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Sorry I canā€™t help you with that, but I guess every door sensor would work as they work with reed switches.

Iā€™m pretty sure you can find a place for a simple magnetic door sensor that will close upon sitting on a mesh chair like Aeron. There are many moving parts in it and you donā€™t need a magnet to touch the sensor, just move close enough.

Mount a motion sensor to the underside. It wonā€™t be a continuous off response, but on will be instant, and off, depending on how fidgety you are can prob be pretty close to when you stand up.

Nice project. When you are sitting on it, does the Aqara sensor constantly closed? Or it is a momentary toggle?

Thanks! Itā€™s constantly closed when you sit on it.

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Unfortunately not. I just tested this with the same sensor and found it only triggered when I got into or out of the bed, not while I was lying in bed. Iā€™m a pretty big guy but even my weight was insufficient to maintain sufficient pressure when distributed across the bed and through the mattress. The sensor worked when placed above the mattress under the sheets, but Iā€™d prefer the sensor to be more discreet.

Iā€™m experimenting with ways to ā€œtuneā€ this and make it work though.

Update: Tested the sensor on a very firm mattress in the guest room. The sensor still did not hold while in bed but after adding bubble wrap above and below the sensor to increase pressure, the sensor worked well. The same did not work on my softer bed so Iā€™m still experimenting. I also found that even when working, the sensor detection range through the firm mattress was about 700mm (27") so multiple sensors wired in parallel may be required for different sleeping positions.

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Hi, this is a great idea! Thanks for sharing. I wanted to know if you had any idea on what should be the minimum weight/pressure on the sensor for it to activate? I want it to sense a coffee cup, not sure if it is calibrated for human weight.

Canā€™t try it for you now but I think it should work when the cup is full and there is a thin layer between the sensor and the cup.

Alright home assistant community, Iā€™m stumped. I built the sensor as the OP did and reassembled the original aqara housing with 2 cutouts for the wires (in HA I made a custom sensor reversing the open/closed states so it could go in a sensor group and gave it a template icon for solid chair or outlined chair) and it works fabulouslyā€¦ for me. Unfortunately itā€™s very unreliable when my wife sits in the rocker. So if turns out when she stands up she drags a little bit, which causes the sensor to register multiple events very quickly and get stuck in the closed/occupied states and the lights never turn off. Not a big deal, but this morning she managed to do the opposite, and got the sensor stuck in the open/no presence state, so the lights were turning off on her every minute. She could have resolved this by standing up and sitting down again, but she was holding a baby and exceptionally tired. Needless to say, Iā€™ve lost WAF for the chair sensor + motion sensor combo that was working so well.

For anyone that has this setup, can you reproduce this by dragging your hand across the sensor? It takes me a few attempts to reproduce. Iā€™ve also tried changing the placement of the pressure sensor, but havenā€™t found a spot that works reliably.

Any ideas, or zigbee settings that could be fiddled with? Iā€™m sure switching to esp and an fsr or another sensor would work more reliably, but this setup is so discrete and the battery power is ideal since thereā€™s no free outlets near by.

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Hi, I sometimes have this issue too. I think with the Aqara sensor the only way to eliminate this, is to have some hardware debounce circuit between the Aqara sensor and the pressure sensorā€¦

Or maybe one day we can flash custom firmware on the Aqara sensors and have a software debouncer :thinking:

I made this on the weekend and Iā€™m very satisfied with it. Thank you so much! Can I run a hypothetical diy tech question by you that this project gave me an idea for? Googling didnā€™t turn up a clear answer and I really donā€™t have much experience with soldering, programming, or diy tech. I was wondering if you think attaching an IR receiver sensor similarly to the aqara sensor would work, something like this:

Essentially, Iā€™d like to activate a sensor for home automation by pointing an IR remote at the IR receiver, and have several scattered around near smarts lights, plugs, etc. Would attaching an IR receiver the the aqara allow that?

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Great project! Can you test how much weight is needed in your project? Was thinking about detecting changing diapers. So Iā€™d need to know if 4kg are enough to trigger the closed state.

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