What recommendations do people have for PIR sensors that can work with home assistant without the need for a hub. If i was looking at the xiomi offerings… I take it if i run over MQTT i shouldn’t need a hub? Opinions would be greatly appreciated!
You will not need a hub, but you will need a zigbee stick (such as a conbee, which I use). There is an official deconz add on which will allow you to interface with the stick.
I have a Z-Wave one I use but it too needs a USB stick. My stick does both z-wave & zigbee.
Thanks Dolores - I’ll look into it. I thought there may be stickless/hubless options available over MQTT that i could interface over IP with or similar… What stick are you using bosborne? Are you using any PIR sensors with it?
I bought a PIR sensor, wired it to a D1 mini running tasmota and job done.
Cost is minimal, does the same as a bought one and communicates over MQTT
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I use a HUSBZB-1 stick.
I have a Neo Coolcam PIR motion sensor (US frequency) I ordered from China.
I am in the US. Z-wave is region-specific.
You could do nearly anything over mqtt, but I’m not aware of any commercially available options. You could build the bruh multisensor or something similar to it. I’ve done so, bruh made it very easy to follow his instructions.
PIR sensor with esphome, you need an AP for wifi, which I suppose could be called a “hub”.
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@Nickrout - have you done it? What pir sensor did you use?
I should have mentioned that it’s paramount that the pir runs from batteries as I have no access to power where it’s going. Be I suppose either something RF or Matt enabled that runs on batteries ? Anyone had any luck?
@dolores the bruh sensor looks really good actually… I’ll give that a go for some other situations, but for this use case it must run from battery (sorry forgotnto mention) Good shout though.
I’m feeling mqtt may be a littl heavy of a protocol for battery powered devices would zwave or zigbee or RF be lighter, and in turn, last longer on battery?
zwave plus is designed for low battery usage.
No you won’t get a good result with an esp8266/esp32 and batteries.
Asking a question, getting a load of answers, then changing the question wastes many peoples time.
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Apologies I missed this bit of information. It’s not intentional and the question changed based on research I’ve done due to the kind answers provided. It’s all helped and appreciated. What pir solution did you settle on nickrout?
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I am happy with xiaomi ones. They are zigbee and can be user with the xiaomi gateway or various diy solutions like zigbee2mqtt
I have zwave PIR devices that have no issue on battery. I think they have been on the same battery for 18 months.
@dap35 - thanks for this, how are you interfacing with them exactly? Zwave hub or dongle? What model have you had luck with?
AKA “hub” 
For wireless/battery powered sensors you’ll need a hub/receiver for zigbee/zwave/433mhz/etc
If you are happy to have a wired/powered sensor then you can consider wifi and no hub.
As mentioned by @nickrout and others you wont have good success with battery powered wifi sensors - they eat through batteries, have a lot of latency etc.
Haven’t tried it, but this Coolcam NAS-PD01W WiFi PIR looks interesting. No hub. It’s Tuya, so perhaps could be made to work with the HA Tuya component. It presumably uses an ESP8266, so you could try flashing ESPHome or Tasmota if you’re feeling adventurous.
They claim 5 years standby time or one year active if triggered 25 times/day.
AKA “hub.” It’s an impossible requirement if they want the sensor to actually provide information to anything else instead of simply sensing!
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The difference though is that most people have wifi already at home, so the “hub” is zero cost.
I use the Aeotec zwave stick in my Pi 3b+ , running hassio. For PIR’s, I have two of “Ecolink Intelligent Technology Z-Wave Pet Immunity Motion Detector with Pet Immunity, White (PIRZWAVE2-ECO)”. I believe there is a newer z-wave plus version.
I use these to track arrival/leaving through the basement, so they don’t get a lot of traffic. They exist to turn my kitchen lights on as I come the stairs when I return home in the evening.
I suspect if they were activated more often, the battery life would be shorter. On the other hand, the one time I replaced the battery, it was because I had them over a year and replaced the battery out of caution, not a problem.