Hue Motion sensivity and battery lifetime

Hi, does anyone here have experience with how the battery life of the Hue motion sensor changes depending on the sensitivity? Does the battery last longer on “low” than on “high”?

I run 12 HUE motion sensors on high and get between 2 years and 3 years of battery life out of them.

I have one where motion is mostly de-activated (because I use it as temp sensor) and that gets around 2.5 years from a set of batteries - but it is also mounted in a windy and often cold place.

So I would argue that the sensitivity does not affect battery life.

Same as @Frank_Beetz, we have 10 hue motion sensors with differing sensitivity and get between 2-3 years battery on average apart from high traffic areas that maybe last 18 months or so.

offtopic: So Hue sensors (Philips) have temperature entities in HA? I use Zwave sensors now. But want everything easier. So if i can replace them so they use Hue bridge would be great,

They do. Both indoor and outdoor versions. And they seem to be pretty accurate.

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and when you have those sensors they are native supported in HA with temp sensor?

Yes. It’s exposed as a standard temperature sensor. Has following configuration options:

  • Name
  • Icon
  • Unit of Measurement - K/C/F
  • Display Precision - 70.10/70/70.1, etc
  • Entity ID - e.g. “sensor.hue_motion_sensor_1_temperature_2”

I’m talking about Hue motion sensors connected to Hue hub. And they should be enabled in the Hue app.

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Motion, lux, temp, battery, lqi and rssi are also exposed if paired directly via zigbee (no hue hub), just for any interested parties.

Yes, they are also exposed through Hue integration.
There are three sensors - Motion, Illuminance and Temperature.
I was talking only about the temperature sensor.

Unfortunately the luminance sensor only gets updated when the motion sensor sees movement - so it is of limited use,

When connected through Hue hub it updates independently.

Hi rokoto - thanks for that info.
When I previously tested this, I just did not wait long enough.

I double checked and indeed they do update - without motion, it takes approx. 4 minutes before the sensor shows the new value.

For some automations, that wait would be perfectly acceptable.

I use ZHA and Skyconnect. As you can see the illuminance is reported independent of motion detection.

When I use a Zigbee dongle it won’t interfere with Philips Hub?

You can change the zigbee channel on home assistant and on the hue hub to avoid clash if necessary.

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Hey, quick question. I run 6 sensors. For 1 year they had been running through the hue bridge. Then for 1 Year through ZHA and now 1 Year through z2mqtt. Still they show 100% even though 5 of them are on very very high trafic areas. Are those shown percentages true?

I run mine through the HUE bridge and while they stay on 100% for a year or so, they then graudually go down - mine last around 3 years before they hit 20 % .

Thanks for the response :slight_smile:

Okey so i just have to wait until the battery is shown with a different percantage or they stop working.

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