Yeah, I’ve disabled mine too. They’re still connected just in case an OTA appears, but they don’t do anything anymore.
Tired of switching off the lights manually every 5 minutes in the middle of the night 
I’ve now fixed both of my Vallhorns, ironically I’ve changed from yellow IKEA Alkaline AAA batteries, to two other brands (one cheap and one expensive brand).
They was all new, but I’ll guess my IKEA devices doesn’t like IKEA batteries
They don’t sell IKEA Alkaline batteries anymore, but this was the variant they sold until recently when they switched to selling rechargeable batteries only.
Not sure if other battery brands are affected as well, or if IKEA is aware of this embarrassing issue, but there’s an chance this might not be fixable over an OTA firmware update at all.
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Interesting find about the batteries. I have two Vallhorn, one is very well behaved while the other one signals bogus movements. The one that works fine has older store-brand batteries, while the other uses brand new Energizer batteries from Home Depot. I’ll try to switch them around and see if the behavior reverses.
I was a bit skeptical about this but I gave it a try. I changed out the batteries to rechargeable Eneloops. Pleased to say that this did solve my problem…for one of the Vallhorns. But the other Vallhorn is still falsely triggering. Almost like clockwork. All day yesterday it would trigger every 54 minutes.
So thanks for the tip, I was able to make one of them usable. Maybe the other unit is just a dud. It’s a shame because I was hoping to replace my old tradfri sensors because I’m so tired of coin cell batteries. As of now I would advise people not to buy these for use in Home Assistant. Now I’m also not sure if I will buy the new Ikea Parasoll water leak detector for fear of similar issues.
*Edit: Looking at the manual for the Vallhorn motion sensor (not included in the box). These do, in fact, call for 1.2v AAA batteries not the typical 1.5 v Duracell or Energizer.
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Wow…glad I found this post (and this is my first HA post :-)…just switched over from Homekit/Homebridge to HA a few weeks ago and loving it! Have about 70 devices–37 of which are zigbee devices from Ikea, Philips and Aqara).
So was super excited to get the Vallhorns as I thought these would be available starting January and ran into the same issue for 5 of the 6 I got. After seeing this post, I’ve tried a bunch of batteries and found that switching to the Amazon Basics rechargeable has resulted in zero falso positives (over 1 evening, mind you) for 2 sensors which were regularly triggering false positives. I have a Battery Daddy caddy (lol) with tester and it “seems” like the batteries that have the highest voltage like the Kirkland AAA+ seem to generate the most consistent false positives. This is only with one evening of testing and swapping out batteries in a few of the sensors. The Nanfu generics seem to do the best for non rechargeable batties but I still had a set that generated false positives so I switched them out immediately with the Amazon Basic rechargeables.
Thank you all for the help and I’ll post updates if it helps. I am concerned in the long run on reliability but let’s see how these go. I mean $9 for a motion sensor that can do indoor / outdoor is hard to pass up and makes me want to outfit every room. I have 5 Hue Outdoor motion sensors and those have been rock solid once I allowed the ZHA unsecure rejoin.
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This is one of the sensors that stopped having false positives after switching out batteries around 1am. Sorry for the un-pc labeling of “master closet”. I went with a few default room names eons ago and wished I didn’t.
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Update: all 6 motions sensors have been working well since switching to 1.2v rechargeables, with no false positives noticed in a few days. Previously I had the false positives as others have reported each hour.
I just bought a few sets of IKEA Ladda AAA batteries to use alongside the Eneloop and Amazon Basic rechargeables so that now all the sensors run on 1.2v batteries. Hopefully battery life in the long run isn’t too bad
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does anyone know if these support direct binding to bulbs?
I just installed a vallhorn sensor (via ZHA), but if I try to set up a automation using the built-in blueprint “motion-activated light” by Home Assistant, I don’t get the sensor in the list of “motion sensors”: am I missing something? thanks!
I pressed the button on the back and switched it from 1 to 5 which seems to have fixed all my issues.
@diodorus I changed the devices type from occupancy sensor to motion sensor in the settings for the entity.
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thanks! by the way, do you know what is the point of the “opening” sensor entity that is also created by default?
Nej, I have no idea. I only just setup the HA container a few weeks ago.
I bought 2 Vallhorn motion detectors last week in Ikea.
I powered both with 2 IKEA “Alkalisk” non-rechargable AAA batteries.
One sensor shows a lot of false positives, the other works fine.
I’m now testing the faulty one with LADDA rechargable batteries.
Using it with Ikea Ladda rechargeable batteries - no false positives
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Same here for 2 days now
For me it seems to have worked by changing from a 1.5V to 1.2V battery
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It does say to use 1.2v on the website…
“Batteries are sold separately. We recommend 2 x LADDA rechargeable batteries HR03 AAA 1.2V.”
I bought three Vallhorn and installed all with 1.5v AAA batteries, two of them work fine but the third is always detecting movement. I changed that one to IKEAs Ladda 1.2v batteries but it still gives false positives. Almost never resets…
I’m confirming changing 1.5V batteries to rechargeable 1.2V Energizer solved false triggers on 3 Vallhorn sensors.
I’ve also had some issues connecting them. It looks like my Aqara smart socket failed to make an initial zigbee interview. Forced it to connect to the Sonoff zigbee stick and now it works (and also routes via other devices).
https://blog.rozman.info/detecting-movement-in-home-assistant-using-ikea-vallhorn-sensor/
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I’ve recently switched to 1,2V batteries too, Ikea Ladda, even tho mine was running fine with different other brands at 1,5V.
- The first set of batteries was Ikea Alkaline 1,5V, my 2 Vallhorns at that time gave false positives up to multiple times a minute at most.
- Second set of batteries was also 1,5V, but different brands, solved the issue 99%. Now I have 3 Valhorns in total, but one of them is still giving false positives, but at least it’s now down to maybe 2-5 times a day.
- Third battery change was to 1,2V Ikea Ladda, didn’t make any difference for me. The third Vallhorn still has false positives at the same rate as before. I’ve been running these batteries for about a week, and the previous set for about 2 weeks. No difference.
It seems like it comes down to what brand batteries we’re using, some have issues, others not. Ikea is recommending their own 1,2V batteries, witch is fine, but it seems like there’s no difference compared to other “confirmed good” 1,5V batteries.
Conclusion: If you’re having issues, best option is swapping to 1,2V rechargeable batteries. For those who already have Vallhorns with 1,5V batteries, and doesn’t experience any issues, there’s no reason to rush, swapping them to 1,2V probably won’t make any difference at all.
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