How to check if someone is in bath?

Configuration
21

Hi, If its of any use and you don’t mind using node red I created a function for detecting the rate of rise of temperature but you could adapt it for your use. The function just really compares two values it receives in succession and calculates the difference. So for the actual rate of rise you would need to send the temp/humidity values at an interval of 1 min or more.

Node Red Flow
Screenshot 2020-11-21 at 22.17.01

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@nickrout , could you explain how a hygrostat would help here?

As far as I understood, the hygrostat reacts/switches when it detects changes relative to a fixed set point for (relative) humidity. As you pointed out, bath action detection needs to take changing background humidity into account. How would one accomplish this with the hygrostat integration?

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@michib I would use this custom integration. GitHub - basschipper/homeassistant-generic-hygrostat: Generic Hygrostat for Home Assistant

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I am surprised that no one suggested the VL53 series of “TOF Sensors”. These sensors measure the distance to an object, even through a layer of sheetrock.

From another thread:

(Why they are called “Time of Flight” is a mystery. They are simply a radar-based distance sensor).

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Because they have read the first post which set out that the OP wanted to capture sharp rises in relative humidity, not presence.

1 Like
26

Just offering an alternative solution, like others in the thread did.

27

I would accomplish this the same way I already have: humidity sensor in the bathroom, and a humidity sensor not in the bathroom. Compare the humidity in the bathroom to the general humidity elsewhere in the house. If the humidity in the bathroom is a significant amount higher than that in the rest of the house, the bath/shower is being used. In my case, I use it to determine how long to run the exhaust fan for, but I see no reason it couldn’t be used in the manner OP was looking for.

IMO, this is much easier than looking for spikes in a graph.

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Because they measure the time it takes for a light (photon) packet sent from the sensor to bounce back to it. Radar also uses the time of flight physical principle, but ToF sensors are not radar. They’re optical devices using an infrared laser, while radar uses RF waves. Radar can penetrate walls and bounce back from metallic structures. Tof behaves like visible light and is closer to LiDAR.

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LOL Time of Foton Light?

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Time of Photon Flight :slight_smile:

Jokes aside, the physics behind these things is fascinating and shows just how advanced these devices really are. Good ToF sensors actually detect, count and measure individual photons using a SPAD (single photon avalanche diode). They count ‘particles of light’, while RF radars use interference, treating RF ‘light’ as a wave. Wave particle duality in practice :slightly_smiling_face:

Okay back to bathroom humidity !