Motion Sensors - Humans Only

Hardware
1

Can anyone recommend any smart motion sensors that ignore pets, because I can’t find any?

2

The Aqara FP2 just came out (it’s a mmWave based sensor). Availability is a little limited depending on your country. I just got six of them, and they do a good job ignoring my two cats. They aren’t cheap, and they are wifi based (use the HomeKit Controller integration in HA to use them in HA). There are a couple of threads in the forums on them if you want to take a look.

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3

Fibaro Motion Eye (Zwave) does good job lacking reactions on my Teckel, after I tuned it a little less sensible (easy job setting parameters).

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4

I keep looking every day at the Amazon availability of the FP2 in the UK and it’s still out of stock.
My only issue is that I asked Aqara on Twitter about pets and they said it would ignore them but another user replied that their cat was triggering the FP2 every time.

5

I’m using Zigbee in my HA instance and I don’t think I can also use Zwave at the same time, unless I’m confused.

6

They can live together without any problems (that’s exactly, what HA stands for), but to buy a Zwave USB stick and some motion sensors is indeed maybe not worth it. Same like Zigbee, Zwave needs a good mesh, so it works the best, when the amount of devices grows.

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7

DSC Wireless PIR Ws4904 Passive Infrared Motion Detector

That is an alarm based one, but it is amazing. I have a 125# dog and she rarely even sets it off.

I couldn’t find any that I found compelling that were not part of an alarm system which is why I went down that route. I had tried a few back in the day (2020) when I wanted to do this and wasn’t happy with any of the results.

I hate to sound like an alarm company commercial, but they have the best and put a ton of work into these as users will not react to keenly to their alarms going off constantly do to pets.

I integrated mine into HA with an Envisalink card.

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8

I guess YMMV. I have 2 cats. They have not triggered the FP2s once in entire 2 weeks I’ve had the FP2s. Someone in the Aqara thread said their 150lb dog didn’t set it off either.

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9

This FP2 sounds interesting, I see it even has Fall Detection.
Since it’s WiFi based, I wonder if if anyone knows if it:

  1. works without Internet access;
  2. can be directly connected to HA.
    I have no experience with HomeKit Controller - Home Assistant. It seems like it’s a yes, but I want to be sure :slight_smile:.
  3. (tech question) needs to be in the same broadcast domain as HA. In other words, does it have it be in the same VLAN/Network as HA?
10

Yes(ish). To set it up and get the zones configured, it needs internet access. Why? I don’t know. but the Aqara app won’t talk to the FP2s without it. But to use it with HomeKit (or HA using HomeKit Controller) you don’t need internet access. So you can set all the zones up and then block internet access for the FP2s. It’ll work fine in HA, but the Aqara app won’t work.

Yes. If you’re using an iOS device for setup, the Aqara app makes you add it to the iOS Home app before you can set anything up. You have to remove it from the iOS Home App and restart the FP2, but then it will get auto discovered by HA (as long as you already have the HomeKit integration enabled).

That may depend on how you have your VLANs setup. I have HA and the FP2s on the same VLAN, but you should, in theory, be able to setup your VLANS to allow the HomeKit stuff across VLANs.

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11

I use Philips motion detectors, but even at the lowest sensitivity my cat triggers it.

Why would mmwave change anything to detecting animals ? I believe that it mostly improves sensitivity of motion detector (for very small movement), at the cost of being slower, right ? While the tech seems to allow detecting the angle of the motion event (probably what is used for the area features of the aqara), it does not allow to filter by object size or configure window width.

I am also looking for sensors that would trigger when you walk in front of it, tripwire-style like lasers in elevators for instance (setup at human upper body height) but that doesn’t seem to be a thing.

Maybe an mmwave with very narrow window would only detect motion in a line ? That would require some optical lens I guess… Or through custom software ?

12

Any IR barrier sensor in combination with a smart switch would do… :wink:

13

Thanks for the suggestion; however you need to place a receiver at the other end, which i’d prefer to avoid.

Just found that there are narrow PIR sensors too, called “Curtain motion sensors”:

That seems to be a thing (expensive):

I should probably try to reduce normal PIR sensor detection window angle using tape or lego to keep costs reasonable

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