Lights slow to turn on after trigger

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1

I have some motion sensors set up around the house to turn on lights for stairs and hallways but I am noticing that there is a slight delay between the sensor detecting motion and the lights turning on. I also notice the same delay between hitting the light switch and the Hue bulbs turning on. It’s not a huge delay, maybe .5 sec at most, but it’s enough for me to get halfway down the stairs before the lights turn on. My other Zooz switches that I manually turn on/off are instant which makes me think that it’s the automation that is the source of the delay.

All the automations are fairly simple. They all contain an on and off trigger and triggered by condition to determine if it should turn on or off. In some cases I have additional conditions such as time of day to determine brightness of the lights.

Is this normal for automations to cause a delayed activation? If there any way for me to speed it up?

Equipment:
HA Green
ThirdReality Motion Sensors
Zooz Light Switches
Philips Hue Smart Bulbs
Philips Hue Hub
Z-Stick 10 Pro for both Zigbee and Z-Wave

2

You need to figure out which component of your setup is introducing the delay.

I use Zigbee2MQTT so I can see the inbound and outbound messages to home assistant:

1770235967.718014612 : zigbee2mqtt/bridge/logging : {"level":"info","message":"z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Living Entry IR', payload '{\"battery\":100,\"illumination\":\"dim\",\"linkquality\":212,\"motion_timeout\":19,\"occupancy\":true,\"update\":{\"installed_version\":8705,\"latest_version\":8705,\"state\":\"idle
1770235967.718259801 : zigbee2mqtt/Living Entry IR : {"battery":100,"illumination":"dim","linkquality":212,"motion_timeout":19,"occupancy":true,"update":{"installed_version":8705,"latest_version":8705,"state":"idle"},"voltage":2900}
1770235967.728706348 : zigbee2mqtt/Living Entry IR : {"battery":100,"illumination":"dim","linkquality":212,"motion_timeout":19,"occupancy":true,"update":{"installed_version":8705,"latest_version":8705,"state":"idle"},"voltage":2900}
1770235967.743668296 : zigbee2mqtt/Hall Ceiling/set : {"state":"ON","brightness":253,"color_temp":142}
  • The first message is Z2M logging what is going to do.
  • The second and third messages are from an IR sensor recording motion.
  • The fourth message is coming from Home Assistant - turning on a bulb.

The timestamps are UNIX epoch times (number of seconds since 1st Jan 1970) however the critical part is the fraction of a second.

Subtracting the 2nd time from the 4th shows that Home Assistant is (worst case) servicing the request in 25 milliseconds (0.025 seconds).

Given that, I can check the other components:

  • How long does it take for the sensor to detect my presence.
  • How long after the “on” command does it take for the light to turn on.

Note I don’t have a scientific way to measure those last two points - I just click the button and see how long the light takes to come on / walk in front of the sensor whilst watching the Mosquito logs.

You will need to do something similar to identify where the latency in your setup is coming from.

If I had to guess, it would be that your sensors are introducing the latency - i.e.: that both home assistant and the outbound command are quick / not the problem - however you will need to test and confirm.