DIY Zigbee bed presence sensor

Hey guys, upon watching Everything Smart Home video tutorial on how to make a DIY bed sensor, I’ve been wanting to make something similar. The thing is that my DIY abilities are way under the minimum necessary for that project in particular. With this in mind, I wanted to try and use more “Ready to use” components with fewer things to build. I also wanted it to be Zigbee because I have a better Zigbee coverage than Wi-Fi coverage at my bedroom

Upon researching a bit, I found that most door/window sensors do their detection using a simple component with 2 terminals that I could extend and hook to something else.


Soldering of one of the two terminals in the door sensor.

I also find out that there are some simple pressure sensors used in car seats that are very cheap and also have 2 terminals to input data.

With this, it was only a matter of connecting the dots (or terminals in this case) and drilling a little hole for the cables and the information on the pressure sensor was sent to the door sensor already connected via Zigbee 2 MQTT on my Home Assistant instance.


Finished piece

Comparing to the reference sensor on the video, mine is way less precise than the one @EverythingSmartHome built, but given my constraints it was a fun project to do!

I still don’t do much with it, but being able to auto dim my bedroom lights when I lay down was already worth it! Let me know if you guys have any other suggestions on how to use it

Parts I used:

Door sensor (I used a Zigbee one because I have better Zigbee coverage than Wi-Fi at my bedroom)
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003974081433.html

Pressure sensor
https://aliexpress.com/item/1005003653174809.html

Jumper Cables (can be any electronics cable)
https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005004611997111.html

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I would like to use this to turn off all the lights in the house after going to bed.

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Very doable. It was my first option of automation, but the first time I turned off lights earlier than I wanted I reverted this hahaha

One possible path is for the simple bed presence to dim the lights (as I already do) and use some other condition to turn them off. For an example, the phone charging and/or a time based trigger.