Looking for Zigbee lux / motion sensor

Hardware
1

Hi all,

Looking for recommendations for a Zigbee lux / motion sensor. Not sure if it varies per sensor but I’m looking for one that updates lux values quickly.

I’ve got an Aqara motion / lux sensor, but the lux value doesnt seem to update quickly… may be a config issue?

Any ideas?
James

2

It update the LUX every time there is motion, as far as I understand. Within 1 minut.

3

As far as I know, there is no way to change the polling interval. Also if you would be able increase the polling interval, the battery drain would increase and therefore not last very long.

I know that for the temp/humidity sensors from Aqara the polling interval is 1 hour and in addition it will update when there are extreme changes in temp/humidity. Do you have the same behabior for youe lux sensor?

4

That’s a fair point about the battery drain…

To be honest I only want lux information when motion is detected. So should be all ok.

Thanks

Still open to suggestions for other zigbee sensors though… The aqara one is a bit odd looking when mounted in the corner on the wall.

5

What about the Hue motion sensor?

6

There is the Phoscon Light Sensor.

EDIT: it seems that the product is not available anymore.

1 Like
7

I think when I was trying to find one, I didn’t really consider the Hue sensor because of cost… anyway, ordered one now :slight_smile: Thanks for reminding me of it.

8

That one looks ok… Can’t seem to find it for sell anywhere though.

9

There is in fact, someone took it apart and noticed when soldering something together, you could change the sampling frequency to seconds instead of every 2 minutes.

10

Interesting, but wouldn’t the battery drain kill it in like a few hours/days?

11

Most likely the battery will drain faster, true. However, I assume the most battery is consumed when transmitting over the zigbee radio, which will not happen every 30 seconds (unless it needs to report a state change).

12

James,

You can increase the polling interval on the Aqara sensor by following the instructions in the below link -

13

Does this also force to update the lux sensor more often?
Isn’t this mod only for the motion sensor? If I understood correctly, before the mod, when you triggered the motion sensor, you had to wait 60 seconds before you could trigger it again, and after the mod you can trigger the motion sensor again after 5 seconds. I don’t think that this will also increase how often the lux sensor measures for new values.

14

Are you talking about the link that @Syrius posted? Because as far as I understand,this doesn’t increase the sampling frequency of the lux sensor, it only allows the motion sensor to be triggered more often.

15

Yes, ok I thought it was for both, my mistake.

16

Thanks for the tips guys.

As amby pointed out, lux information is sent when motion is detected which should be sufficient for what I need.

The reason I want a lux data is because of this… please tell me if I’m over engineering this or there is an easier/better way :slight_smile:

I have a Pi Touchscreen mounted by my front door which will(currently displaying volumio) run lovelace.

I have two problems with it.

  1. I don’t want the screen on all the time
  2. I don’t want it to be running max brightness at night or low brightness in the day.

So what I’ve done using node-red is setup a flow that at a high level does the following

Motion detected -> turns the screen on and fades the brightness depending on lux level -> Turns screen off after x minutes.

On the pi touchscreen I’ve setup a flask api to run rpi-backlight commands. I’m really happy with the result and really surprised I managed to get it working. :slight_smile:

17

What I have is one outdoor lux sensor and have lights inside and outside that work on separate automations with different lux levels set in the conditions.