Meross ms600 Presence Sensor: useless?

Configuration
1

The Meross ms600 Presence Sensor (firmware 9.4.25.1.8.2, hardware version 9.0.0, Signal strength is 100%) does not seem to work reliable and seems to have bugs.

If I include the ms600 with matter directy to HA it only gives lights and motion. I did not test this long.

Include ms600 in meross app and via “meross lan” integration to HA works better (german screenshot):

Bildschirmfoto 2024-12-04 um 02.19.16
Bildschirmfoto 2024-12-04 um 02.19.16323×1182 35.9 KB

But the motion value is not reliable. I tried every sensitive setting in the Meross app, but “Sensor presence motion” changes randomly it seems. Changes in the app for sensitivity take up to a minute before they are visible in HA.

If I go in the room there are several possible scenarios:

  1. Sometimes it takes a few seconds before “motion” shows detected.

  2. Often when I walk into the room “motion” changes to “Erkannt” (detected) and a second later to “keine” (not detected), until I move again than it goes back to “detected”.

  3. When motion is “detected” and I move or another person comes into the room “motion” changes instantly to not detected until I move again.

I don’t even know how motion can change so fast from “not detected” to “detected” and back to “not detected” in a few seconds, because I set the time for “no detection” to 15 seconds or 30 seconds, so instant change to “not detected” should not be possible. It must be an error in the HA integration, or the device itself.

“Light” was shown at first. but changed to “not available” and stayed there.

I don’t know the meaning of “mth1-3” or the value for “presence”, and the meross website does not have any documentation about this.

In the meross app, the presence detection is the same. I can jump up and down directly in front of the sensor, but nothing changes, than a few seconds later when I stand still it detects motion, but goes to not detected two secondes later.

In comparison I have two “Everything Presence Lite” sensors and they work flawlessly, but I needed more presence sensors and the “EPL” are very expensive and not available at the moment anyway.

The ms600 seems to be a broken and useless device. So I bought the ms600 (because I have several Smart Plugs and a temperature sensor, these Meross devices work flawlessly), will probably return the MS600 unless someone here knows the magic to get the it to work bugfree.

2

So… it seems the motion entity is useless, but the presence entity is more accurate.

Its basically “occupancy”. If Presence is above 1 then something is detected, if it is 1 there is no person detected.

3

After some days I have the following conclusion: The meross ms600 works raliable if using the presence value.

1 Like
4

Hey, can you please send me a picture of your automation with the MS600?

Its not working very well for me :frowning:

5

Exactly how did you got them showing up in Home Assistant at all? Did you set them up there first, or in the Meross app first?

My first experience with a Matter device has not been good, to say the least. :angry: It took me over 2 hours just to get it working right with the official app. Ended up having to use 2 different phones for different parts of the setup because of some obscure issue. Now it’s working with Meross, but Home Assistant has never detected it once. The HA Matter Integration and addon don’t even seem to have any useful manual pairing options with a temporary code, like the Meross video suggests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzFLF2ROdvY

Google Home detects it and seems to have an option to pass that to Home Assistant, but it repeatedly fails during it’s own setup. Then there is all this talk about a Matter hub being required, but the official app somehow seems to work without that, so I don’t even know if it’s using Matter!

6

422 POST error
Edit: There we go, even the forum software is having a bad day. :angry: Take 20 tries to get my message to post correctly. See below.

7

I had to factory reset this like 20 times and spend all day with this before I got it working, in part due to unrelated issues, but just wanted to share for anyone else that finds this in the future, you need to setup Matter first after the factory reset of the device.

This is because if you setup the Meross app first, the device will end up in a state where there is no way to get it back in pairing mode for Matter or generate temporary setup codes, unless you factory reset it again (Dumb design).

Do NOT go through the set up in the Meross app where you scan the QR code or select the model. Once you setup Matter with HA using the Companion app, the device will be on the Wi-Fi, and the Meross app will pick it up right away when you hit add device from there.

Mine is working perfectly now. I can fine tune the settings in the Meross app, and have them basically apply to Home Assistant as well.

1 Like
8

I have been using this sensor for quite some time now and does a pretty good job. There is no ghosting issue as is with Aqara FP2.
However, there is a significant concern with Meross MS600 device that is it needs an internet connection to work!

I have been testing and using other sensors like FP2 and Sonoff and none of them needs an internet connection to work. If you restart the Meross MS600, the presence detection will be stuck at “Detected” and illumination level at 1 lux until it gets an internet connection!

I sent an email to support and this is what they said:

“After restarting the MS600, the device will attempt to retrieve certain data. If the connection to the internet is interrupted during this process, the app may display an error message or exhibit the behavior you mentioned.”

To say the least it is inconvinient, but the issue here is privacy protection and most important of all is if someday they decide to trash the product then all sensors out there will stop working! This also means that they have the ability to target and block the usage of a device for whatsoever reason they might wish, afterall the strongest advocates of privacy protection wont even trust big companies for that matter!

3 Likes
9

Bildschirmfoto 2025-01-27 um 16.26.15

The ms600 is included via the “Meross LAN” integration. “Sensor presence motion” still shows wrong results and is not reliable. The important and reliable sensor is the first one on the image: “Presence”. If the value is above 1 at least one person is in the room, when its 1 no one is in the room. Its not a person counter, it just seems to count the consecutive successful motion detections.

My automation is triggered when the presence entity of the ms600 is changing its value.

trigger: state
entity_id:
  - sensor.ms600_schlafzimmer_presence

If the value is below 2 there is no presence detected and the automations turns off the light:

condition: numeric_state
entity_id: sensor.ms600_schlafzimmer_presence
below: 2

Otherwise (that means presence entity is 2 or more) the light is turned on.

It works, but is a bit awkward. I would not buy this sensor again.

10

I got one for cheap today from Amazon and I can confirm it’s one piece of garbage. What’s described in this topic is 100% true. Regarding Matter, to add the device is flawless but the device itself is full of flaws. The only way to get it working in an acceptable way is how OP described it. With Meross LAN through HACS with the “Presence” entity by using < 2 for no motion and > 1 for motion detected. Once you get the gist it’s working quite reliable.

So for people reading this, use HA Companion app to add the Matter device to HA and to connect it to your wifi network. Afterwards add it to the Meross app and calibrate your sensor in the room you want to use it and do firmware updats. Afterwards add the device to HA via Meross Lan HACS to Home Assistant. Feel free to delete the device added through Matter because it will be double and the matter one doesn’t add anything extra.

11

It works as mentioned although as we all found out it can be rather confusing to setup.
Which sensor is represented by which value is questionable.

The lux is easy but which one is the pir and which is the presence sensor.
Or did they combo them together?
The presence doesn’t go below 2 even with no movement if your in the room so it seems to be at-least somewhat tied to the mwave.

Firmware needs work to clean things up and remove bugs but it is solid and fuctinal when setup as mentioned.

12

Had an error message “Something went wrong” from Home Assistant when installing the Meross Smart Sensor as an existing device.

Thanks @flyoffacliff Ben, your advice to ‘Set up Matter first after the factory reset’ worked.

So I removed the device from all other controllers first, before adding to Home Assistant as a New Device.

Resolved my problem by:

  • Removed device from Alexa app
  • Removed device from Meross app
  • Reset Meross Presence Sensor - Press back button for 5 seconds
  • Added New Device in Home Assistant
  • Scanned the QR Code pasted on the Device
    Device was installed sucessfully after that.
1 Like
13

I’ve been using this sensor since Dec 2024 and it’s been working rather well. I use the following entity to determine presence…

binary_sensor.meross_presence_sensor_1_sensor_presence_motion

The sensor is in a bedroom and used to turn the ceiling fan on and off based on temp and presence detected.

Screenshot 2025-04-05 at 2.17.04 PM
Screenshot 2025-04-05 at 2.17.04 PM640×732 26.4 KB

You can see how its state is constantly changing when you look at the history…

Screenshot 2025-04-05 at 2.18.30 PM
Screenshot 2025-04-05 at 2.18.30 PM2480×442 56.9 KB

My only complaint is that, because it is on a different subnet than the HAOS instance, despite my network permitting comms between HAOS and my IoT network, it sometimes drops off and is unavailable but that’s a network problem and not a Meross problem.

All-in-all, I’m quite happy with the sensor especially when compared to the Aqara FP2.

14

How did you get all those entities to show up? Are you using Matter or a custom integration?

The only ones I get with Matter are the light level and the binary sensor for presence. Not distance or anything.

15

I’m using the Meross LAN integration.

EDIT: Adding the link to Meross LAN.

16

Curious how you got this working? I set it up via Meross LAN but the sensors never seemed to pickup anything

According to ChatGPT its not supported through it

MS600 cannot work in Meross LAN.

It is hub-only and does not expose any local API.
Home Assistant will always show it as Unavailable unless you use the Meross cloud integration

17

It worked with Meross LAN, but since a week or so both MS600 sensors stopped working: MS600 Presence sensor does not report presence anymore. · Issue #599 · krahabb/meross_lan · GitHub

I have now integrated them into Home Assistant via Matter. They work, although only the occupancy and light sensors are exposed, but at least they work reliably.

I won’t be buying Meross products again. They’re relatively cheap, but the support seems suboptimal.

18

Same here. I’ve noticed they stopped working. I have 2 of them and neither is reporting motion/presence. Ugh.

19

There querying issue which s causing them to operate slowly at best.

For now i would add it with matter.
This gives you occupancy and light levels.

You have no controls for the device itself but you do get function and local sensors.
Meross lan is great but its never been local control so there is the same delay the app has.

20

One thing of note.
Using matter you get near instance response from occupancy and lux levels unlike using the app or meross lan which mimics the app where they are delayed and erratic at times due to having to communicate with the meross cloud mqtt servers.