Motion sensor with narrow field of view (fov)?

Hardware
1

Hi,

I have an LED strip on the stairs in my house powered by nodeMCU and WLED.

Looking to put motion sensors on the banisters at the top and bottom of the stairs that I can detect in HA and then turn on the LED strip

I only want the motion sensor to detect movement as someone passes the first stair on the top or bottom so I’m looking for a recommendation of a motion sensor with a narrow field of view (sort of like a beam but I don’t think I want to go down the laser route unless someone can convince me why that might be the best solution)

Would like battery powered if possible but I can also power them from the power supply thats running the nodeMCU - I have 12v 20A and 5v 3A available.

I do have HUE bridge with HA integration but the HUE motion sensor probably isn’t what I’m looking for

I’m also willing to pick up a conbee2 if there is a zigbee motion sensor that you recommend.

Price isn’t an issue but cheaper the better.

So ideally I’m looking for

  • Battery powered wifi/zigbee
  • Narrow fov that are small enough that I can hide them
  • Performant enough that HA should be able to detect motion state changes instantly.

I’m also open to customising the WLED source code to add in MQTT pubsub for a connected motion sensor such as https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B016Y10B3O/ if that would help me achieve what I want but I’d rather not if I don’t have to.

And as a last resort, to run a second nodeMcu with ESPHome to power and control motion sensors.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

2

I made a sensor for picking up mail being put in the mail slot, there is a larger version you could use for the wider gap in the stairs,

Read distance, when it decreases below a threshold, someone must have walked through.

1 Like
3

Maybe with some clever positioning and masking part of the motion sensor with black tape you could do this with the Hue motion sensor you already have. I have an Aeotec motion sensor in the bedroom and I masked part of it with tape, put the motion sensor close to the ground, now it only triggers when we walk past the sensor and not when we are moving inside the bed. Might be worth a try.

I’d still suggest getting a ConBee and replacing your Hue bridge, if you connect the motion sensor via ConBee it will push any changes (e.g. motion detected) to HA, with the Hue Bridge however HA needs to poll the state at a predefined interval.

4

Hi,

Thanks for the recommendations guys.

Similar to the GP2Y0A60SZ, I think I’m going to take a look at using VL53L0X and customising WLED source to react to sensor changes on board so that I don’t have to do a round trip to HA with sensor state, just to send command back to nodeMcu to turn on lightstrip.

I’m hoping to be able to use 4 VL53L0X - two at top of staircase and two at bottom which will allow me to detect when someone has entered + exited the staircase based on direction/time of sensors detecting a change and to store number of people on stairs state for turning on/off lightstrip.