yeah they are quite expensive for something you must fiddle around with.
Another solution might be use the arduino thermal camera sensor:
seems it’s about the same pricing…
Distance should be up to 7 meters, so that would be good enough for standard rooms, once correctly calibrated and such, currently awaiting other stuff to arrive, this will be my next project
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Has anyone here tried Aura?
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Aura does not seem intended for Room presence detection. I have also tried Happy Bubbles but could not get them to work reliably 
So for me this is still an unsolved problem!
I started a thread last year about presence awareness by face recognition. As @rb666 said in the previous reply this is still something that someone has to crack yet.
The OpenCV component works, but performance isn’t great on a Pi, and of course you have to hold still for the camera. Working on a better solution
What is needed is something akin to radar. Small devices in every room and an overall device to manage and analyze the results. Each family member would likely present a different radar signature. The analyzed data could show movement and predict destination and activity.
An alternative might be trained bats hanging in the corners of our rooms and finding some way to coordinate the squeaks and send the information to HA.
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Bruh has a youtube video on a system similar to your radar suggestion - but it was damn expensive.
I personally think simple PIR sensors and a probabilistic model based on the layout of your home would be a good start, combined with image recognition
Bats are cheap and they eat bugs and talk about accuracy.
The Xandem system does look interesting but as you say, it is pricey. From the site video, it looks like it is close. I wish it were closer.
What I would like is a system that can decide that I am walking through a room to get to another room, and enable enough brightness to light my way. As I move toward a doorway, turn on the lights in the next room. If I stop inside the room, bring the lights up to allow the best visibility. If I sit in my easy chair to read, dim the lights in the room but adjust the light beside my chair for optimal reading levels.
I’m not sure PIRs and image recognition or Xandem can make this work???
not without a lot of pirs.
strategicly set distance sensors would be more helpfull there.
but you would need quite a lot from them also.
combining pir with distance sensors would be the best possible option for the moment i think.
together with a probablistic model
one way i have been thinking about is putting a IR measurement on both sides of a door
then when you walk in a room +1 room you left would be -1
Have no idea how to set it up think the logic make cents.
setups like this have been used before but it would still be best to include PIR in the mix as well. The problem with the idea you have is a thing called “tailgaiting” if 2 people pass through at the same time. Or a small child walks through, or your arm passes through before your body, etc, etc. Next thing you know everything is out of sync all over the place.
good Points
didn’t think that far ahead
that could be avoided with a distance sensor at the right height directly across the door.
if you combine that with a distance sensor that measures along the wall that has the door in it, you can tell exactly if someone leaves and how many.
I still seriously doubt that even with a ton of pirs or distance sensors you could get acceptable results for a single room let alone a whole house. Determining who is in a room and what lighting level was most appropriate for the activity would ultimately end up being a much larger project than HA itself.
i think you can get acceptable results with 3 distance for each door and 1 pir for each room.
the problem is more if you could place them on the place where they are needed, and if it wouldnt look bad 
the probabilistic model would be the most work, and give the most benifit.
with that you can do quite a lot.
with 1 PIR in my bedroom i can tell all the following (and actions are taken accordingly)
- if my wife goes to bed
- if i go to bed
- if my wife goes out of bed to pea
- if my wife goes out of bed in the morning
- if i go out of bed in the morning
- if there is a breakin
- if my wife is in the bedroom to clean or sort clothes
I guess I haven’t looked at the data stream from a pir. Are you saying the heatmap presented by a pir gives you enough data to determine activity?? and the individual in the room?
What pir are you using?
no probability is the keyword.
i just see the pir saying “on” and based on other settings i can tell those things.
off course it gets screwed up if i am ill and go to bed earlier then expected.
you just need a datasheet from most expected events.
my wife always goes to bed between 23:00 and 01:00 and i always between 2:00 and 4:00
if i go early i push a button on the dashboard telling HA its me and not my wife.
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