Hello!
I just paired an IKEA VALLHORN motion sensor via ZHA, which added these sensors:
Few questions:
Thanks!
Hi Dio,
I would recon if you press the timeout button on the back (1 or 5 min) the time “opening” stays open would follow suit. Not tested it yet, but got a couple of those sensors myself yesterday. 
Yes, it is exactly as expected: the open/close sensor shows the set delay on the motion sensor (1 or 5 minutes). Renewed movement also resets the open/closed sensor. This is very good so that you don’t suddenly find yourself taking a shower in the bathroom without the light on.
Is there a battery entity ?
Hi,
This is just to confirm that vallhorn from Ikea works pretty fine, at least for me.
Setup is:
2 x vallhorn motion sensor, each equipped with 2 x Ikea Ladda 750 mAh AAA size accu
haos running on a virtualbox machine, the hass.io virtualbox image itself
Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle-E, installed in the PC front panel USB 3.0 port
use USB Filter to make Sonoff available for the VB machine (Fig 1)
no USB-A to USB-A extension cord for the dongle just because I ordered it yesterday and it did not arrive yet
running Zigbee Home Automation (Fig 2)
This one detects the Sonoff dongle, then in integration/zigbee home automation/1 device/zigbee coordinator you get to “Add devices via this device” (Fig 3)
When getting there, ha is looking for your zigbee devices. (Fig 4)
In order to add these vallhorn things you need to push the vallhorn device link button 4 times in max 5 sec, as stated by device’s specs to factory reset. They’ll be then found and added to your devices list. Don’t push the link button for “at least 10 seconds” - Ikea advice, I think you have better things to do with your time.
A vallhorn device presents these properties: battery status, identify (pushing this from HA will make the sensor flash reddish for a couple of times), illumination level (at device level), opening (sdfjbg), occupancy (motion detected).
Do not use the default blueprint named “Motion-activated Light”, just create an automation from scratch, it simply works.
Good luck!
Another (maybe useful) data point I discovered that isn’t mentioned here: Vallhorn only sends Illuminance updates to my HA every 30 seconds, if a change is detected at the 30-second mark.
I believe Vallhorn only reads illuminance every 30 seconds. I say this because, with my setup, if the illuminance is the same at the 0-second and 30-second mark, no update will be sent even if I flicked lights ON/OFF during that interval.
Anyone knows if there’s a way to increase the Illuminance read/update frequency?
surely this would mean installing a custom firmware for the Vallhorn.
I’m rather new here, but wouldn’t increasing the update frequency be hard on battery life?
Does anyone else have issues with the range on these? I need to be within about 2m for them to work.
I do not have any problems with range. The one in my living room is visible from the hallway and turn on the lights in the living room just before i enter the room, 5-6 meter from the sensor. Check how it is mounted, it may be interfered by sunshine. I also tried to mount one in the ceiling as I wanted to minimize the detection area. That worked, but then it also reacted when my cat walked by. It works best mounted the correct way on a wall, about 2m above the floor. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/vallhorn-wireless-motion-sensor-smart-white__AA-2398219-1-100.pdf The stability of the device is also best when used with rechargeable 1,2v batteries.
Very useful info here. Thanks for the pairing sequence info.
Dutch user here, picked one up today and it’s working okay so far. Right after pairing I relocated the sensor to its place in the food cellar and initially HA lost track of it. Then after refreshing the HA app UI it came back up.
Testing one simple lights on/off automation and good so far. I used the “occupancy” entity for this automation.
My unit takes 20 seconds to reset the “occupancy” entity back to “Clear”.
It takes around 40 seconds to reset the “open” entity back to closed. Pressing the 1 … 5 button on the back once doesn’t change these timeouts.
So far I think this units lux readings are more reliable than from several Aqara P1.
Most brilliant is the AAA battery choice. Very economical and environment friendly feature. I use rechargeables and they work fine. Getting a 100% battery reading from a pair of AAA’s that have just been charged. Day one now so we’ll see.
I just bought 3 Vallhorn and adopted them in ZHA with no problems at all.
However…
When playing around with the buttons on the back, the detection works fine. But as soon as the LEDs on the back goes off the unit goes into detect and never recovers until i play with the buttons again. It’s like the sleep mode brings it into detect and it never recovers.
Sometimes it works as is should after playing with the buttons…it idles. But after the first detect it locks in detected state.
The LUX meter works fine so its not sleeping entirely.
Vallhorn Firmware 0x01000057 and HA core version 2024.2.1.
It was the same in previous HA version.
Update: It is a battery problem. Replacing the Alkaline batteries I initially put in with rechargeable ones solved the problem. It doesn’t like 3v. Simple as that…
I put in alkaline batteries (Duracell) and it works well. I intend to switch to rechargeables though as soon as it works well and consistently.
I don’t have LEDs on the back AFAIK.
I had the same behavior. I switched my 1,5V batteries to the IKEA 1,2V rechargeable batteries and now it acts like expected.
What is the battery life like with these?
To early to know for real, but my first was installed 8 weeks ago and show batteries at 88% now. Ikea rechargeable batteries.
Has anyone tried to update the firmware on these? I started getting a notification yesterday that there was an update available:
However when I hit ‘Install’ I get an error:
. It shows up under Diagnostics:
File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/zha/update.py", line 177, in async_install
raise HomeAssistantError(f"Update was not successful - result: {results}")
homeassistant.exceptions.HomeAssistantError: Update was not successful - result: <Status.FAILURE: 1>
I’m using ZHA.
Mine work great on the current firmware so I don’t usually update what doesn’t need fixing
Actually managed to find some more info here. Will be keeping an eye on that to see how it develops.
Edit: in case it helps anyone, proximity to the controller does it fact help with the firmware update:
