HLK LD2450 doesnt seem to pick up presense until within 1-2 meters

ESPHome
1

I followed this guide to get the LD2450 set up:

I did use the bluetooth proxy version of the firmware as well to help extend bluetooth in the house, however the devices (4 of them) don’t detect presence until you are pretty close (1-2 meters instead of 4-5 meters). I was hoping someone might know what I am doing wrong.

Another issue I am having, and also less important, is with the custom graph card for it (Plotly).

What is supposed to look like
image

What mine looks like all the time:
image

It never shows anything in the graph with regard to presence and location. I did use the guide verbatim, and did change the .yaml to reflect my sensor, but no love on that.

Any help would be seriously appreciated as I have been trying for a bout 6 weeks to figure out why it doesn’t detect as well as other folks using the same device. Many thanks!

2

Hi,

I just followed the same guide to setup my LD2450.
And i also experiance detection just under 2 meters.
Have you found out anything regarding this?

3

Any outcome about this? Just got my first one and I’m experiencing this. It picks me, but max range seems to be 1m or so. Then it loses me. Also it won’t detect more than 1 target (even with multitarget enabled)

4

It looks like the ESPHome YAML for the guide available is not freely available so it would make it very difficult for the community over here to help with debugging the issue.

My suggestion is to use one of the many freely available open source versions of the YAML for the LD2450 such as the ones below.

I have been using a number of ESP32+LD2450 sensor combos that I put together myself for some time now and the detection range for me is over 5m.

5

I’m using esp32 C3 (seeed studio) with ld2450 and also can’t go past 2m

I used the YAML is their official website: LD2450 Sensor - ESPHome - Smart Home Made Simple

Do you have any idea what I might be doing wrong?

6

What firmware version is your LD2450 on?
Mine is on 2.04.23101915 and has been working fine for me

7

Exactly the same firmware version
I don’t quite understand why it only does up to 2m

8

How are you powering the LD2450?
It requires 5V. You maybe using 3.3V which may impact its range.

9

I’m using esp32 C3 seeed studio, it has a 5v output pin

10

That should be ok then.
Have you tried connecting to the LD2450 via bluetooth using the HLK Radar Tool app on your phone and visually see if the sensor is detecting beyond 2 metres?

11

Yes and in the app it also does not detect beyond 2meters

12

I’m out of ideas. Maybe HiLink changed their hardware in more recent versions as I have 4 x LD2450 sensors bought a couple of years ago and they all work fine to a range of 4 to 5 metres and using a number of different YAML implementions from the following:
Screek (screek-human-sensor/2a/yaml/human-sensor-2a-stable-github.yaml at 8a9176a8c178c41341c69e0383ac4d5835cd75f3 · screekworkshop/screek-human-sensor · GitHub)
53l3cu5 (GitHub - 53l3cu5/ESP32_LD2450)
ESPHome LD2450 yaml implementation (LD2450 Sensor - ESPHome - Smart Home Made Simple).

13

The only other thing I can think for you to try is to connect the LD2450 to another 5V power source to test it and then check the range using the HLKRadar Tool app.
As you are finding that even the HLKRadar Tool is showing that the range is limited rules out any of the ESP32 yaml implementations being at fault.
If the range is improved with an alternate 5V power source then it sounds like your ESP32 board is not providing sufficient power to the LD2450 sensor.