I’m finally looking at implementing motion sensors for lighting control. I figure I’ll get around 20 to start to see how well that covers the house and then adjust from there if needed. I’m trying to decide between Zigbee and RF and wondering if people have experience using both and what the general consensus is.
For Zigbee I’m looking at the Aqara Human Occupancy sensor. I know I’d have to mod these for 5s trigger which isn’t a huge deal. I’ve got a fairly robust Zigbee network with a cc2652 based controller and about 50 repeaters throughout the house. I’ve found that I still miss about 5% of commands sent over Zigbee (especially my blinds), and I have some Ikea buttons which occasionally drop off the network, which is what has me looking at RF as well.
For RF I’m looking at the Sonoff PIR3-RF. It looks to be great right out of the box. It has a mode for 5s trigger time, small (1.5" x 1.3"), and I like the flatness of it over the roundness of the Aqara. It has a longer detection range, but at the same time is narrower (100 degrees vs 170) which is a pretty big downside. The RF bridge can be flashed with tasmota and then centrally installed so I don’t think range will be an issue. And for 20 of them they’re about $100 cheaper. I know RF has limitations for things like door sensors, but are there any limitations when it comes to motion sensors?
I would suggest Aqara motion sensors and ZHA with a Conbee II. I have a setup like this and i can get all features of the sensor and it works flawlessly.
I got rid of the Conbee II at least 6 months back. With it, I had probably 40% of commands missed and things dropping off the network like crazy.
I’ve moved to a Tube controller based off the Cc2652 and things have been significantly better. But even still, I can take an ikea button and put it 3ft from the controller and it’ll still manage to drop off the network. There’s a lot of traffic in the 2.4ghz band here, and I’ve got my zigbee network running on the least congested channel but there’s still overlap and I think that’s what causes my issues. It’s why I’m considering 433mhz.
My major concern with the Aqara sensors is how much I’ve read about them dropping off on other platforms (smartthings and hubitat have terrible results with them). They’re often recommended here and seem to work much better with HA, but if I get issues now with some things dropping off or missing commands, I’m not confident these will be any better.
433Mhz is way worse for this.
I live on a building with 50 flats (the previous one i lives is right next to us with 200 flats) and i have similar buildings around me all with wifi’s etc. Never had an issue and i have 14 zigbee connections and 26 wifi connected devices without having an issue ever. Something else must be going on with you. Especially my aqara devices work for over 2 years with 0 problems or disconnections even though i have an indoor sensor (Rh&Temp)outside.
433 is crowded too with garage doors and other remotes plus it’s much easier to interfere with it.
Btw both of them RF it’s the frequency bands and the protocols that are different.
They suck. Sure, they might work for some people, but eventually you’ll end up having a few of them having issues like: random dropouts, false triggering, stuck on trigger. If you are gonna get TWENTY motion sensors, I would advice you to STAY AWAY from these sensors. You’re just asking for trouble if you cheap out and need 20 sensors. I can guarantee everday one or more will act up. The more you have, the more chance you have at least one of them acts up during a day obviously.
People that don’t have issues either 1) don’t really notice it, since they use it for some area’s that aren’t visited much, or 2) don’t own many devices or sensors so don’t really notice.
Mind you, Sonoff worked just as bad as the Aqara’s. Though less dropouts. Shows how crappy Aqara’s are. Word of advice: if you need 20 motion sensors invest in proper hardware. Motion sensors are one of the most important parts of your entire home (maybe even the most important part) since many automations will be built on them. Your mind will thank you. So will your wallet: it’s expensive having to replace 20 crappy motion sensors down the road with better ones (you could have gotten straight away)
Ofcourse, this is just my experience (among many others).
P.S. I also hardware modded them for the 5s cooldown. Sure it works, but remains wonky since I still had issues of them dropping out or having false triggers.
In your case though, perhaps Zwave is better since it’s a huge area you want to cover. Ofcourse you can also mix Zigbee and Z-Wave for different parts of the area depending on reach/cover.
It’s a big place to try to cover. I’ve got 5,600ft2. I’ve got 5 UnifiAP’s to serve up the WiFi which run on different channels to help WiFi roaming, which I know doesn’t help with Zigbee issues. Every room has a minimum of 2 repeating devices. Visually my mesh looks to be about as solid as it can get, which is why I assume my issues are related to interference.
Thanks for your input. I had read enough experiences on the SNZB-03 sensors to know to avoid those ones. The 60s timer to reset the motion state PLUS a 60s cool down period before it can detect motion again just makes it a bad candidate for any sort of automation. The PIR-3 RF seems to be the complete opposite though as far as feature-set goes. Unknown as far as reliability goes. Not many results come up in a search.
The Hue motion sensor is often considered the “gold standard” of motion sensors, but at $50 each and needing at least 20 (possibly more), I’m looking at $1,000+ vs $200. I’d almost rather double up the sensors in each room and still pay half the price lol
But that’s why I’m also thinking 433mhz. They’ve been used in home security for years and years so I figure they must be reliable, and there’s tons of options out there to choose from. They’re just not as commonly used for automation so it’s hard to find somebody that has used and compared both.
Yes, rookie mistake. That’s exactly what I did like I explained in my post. And then both of them dropped off in a room lol. Before you know it you’ll have 4 motion sensors as a backup and running around everyday in your 5,600ft2 area to keep re-paring one of them. In the end I threw away 18 Sonoff and Aqara’s and replaced them with 9 Hue motion sensors. Using them now for 10 months and haven’t had one single false positive with any of them. Two of them I had to re-pair once (it’s still Zigbee after all )
I don’t have experience with RF motion sensors. But IF your decide to use Zigbee, you are warned lol.
I think in your case you should just buy a few RF models/brands to test out and return what doesn’t work properly. I think you really need to test it yourself, since you have a big area and not many people have experience with that. Even if people tell you it works for them, it’s not a guarantee it will work for you, unless they use it in the same conditions.
Eh. The 433MHz frequency band is good for long range and it penetrates walls a lot better. Which at the same time means more possible interference from neighbors farther away. The biggest issue with the cheap 433MHz protocols is that they’re unidirectional without ACK. So you never know if a signal went through or not. The sensor just blasts it into space and hopes for the best.
I use 433MHz for my outdoor lighting (long range stuff). It works well enough. Sometimes a light misses a command and stays on or off, even without interference (I have no close neighbors). Not often, but it happens. No big deal. But for motion sensors that would suck, so I only use zwave for that (which has been extremely reliable for me). Of course that’s a whole different budget with 20 sensors.
Other important point to consider when talking about reliability with motion sensors, the PIR elements. The cheap ones use very low quality PIR sensors which are unreliable and prone to false positives. The better sensors (Hue, Fibaro, etc) use much more reliable high quality components. That also factors into the price. You get what you pay for. Maybe start with a smaller initial install and see how it goes. You can always ramp up later on.
If you aren’t married to Zigbee, I’ve had excellent experience with Fibaro Z-Wave motion sensors. They are extremely accurate, the battery lasts forever, they integrated cleanly with motion, light (lux), temperature and more and I’ve never had one fail on me and, to me, they are the most attractive and least boxy motion sensor you can find. I got tired of putting 2" x 4" square ugly bricks all over my house.
My whole goal here is to avoid Zigbee if I possibly can!
Just searched those Fibaro z-wave sensors, I remember thinking how creepy they were with that eyeball look LOL. They’re also selling for $112 each so that will be a hard pass.
Are you using 433Mhz to actually switch the light on and off, or a 433mhz sensor fed into an automation which then toggles a zwave/zigbee light? State reporting and acknowledgement would be pretty important for something like a light being on, but I don’t think motion would really need to be bi-directional.
I will likely do as you say and order a few 433mhz and a few zigbee ones and deploy them in non-critical areas like the garage and storage room to compare them.
Wow, the chip shortage must be impacting them, normally they are about $50 each! Also, the light can be configured or disabled entirely. The other nice thing about Fibaro is they are highly configurable on all their settings.
The former. The light relays are 433MHz, the sensors are zwave.
It’s not (only) about state reporting, it’s about making sure the message arrived (and repeating it if it didn’t). Without bidirectional ACK, the sensor has no way of knowing if the motion message it sent was received. It also can’t take advantage of mesh networking, unlike zwave or zigbee. The longer range of the 433MHz band does make up for that somewhat though.
I thought they looked cute, like a cute little eyeball lol. They’re really small. You can turn the LED off though. This is what i ended up doing on those I have in high traffic areas to conserve battery. And I usually get them for around €40 - 45 or so.
I have both 433Mhz Pir and Zigbee Pir. The main difference is the 433Mhz Pir does not send a ‘no motion detected’ signal, so you have to account for that.
You’re just who I was looking for, someone who’s using both.
From my understanding, the PIR sensors that don’t send a no motion signal can be setup using off_delay: 5
Aside from that, are you seeing any difference in reliability between the 2 protocols? What brands are you running?
Thanks for the input!
and running around everyday in your 5,600ft2 area to keep re-paring one of them. In the end I threw away 18 Sonoff and Aqara’s and replaced them with 9 Hue motion sensors. Using them now for 10 months and haven’t had one single false positive with any of them. Two of them I had to re-pair once (it’s still Zigbee after all