Motion sensors

Is anyone using any motion sensors to control lights that they are happy with? I have a motion sensor in my kids bathroom that controls 2 zwave bulbs but it doesn’t work reliably. Sometimes it turns the lights on and sometimes it doesn’t. Also it never seems to restart the timer as well. Any recommendations?

I have some wired 12V motion sensors connected to GPIO.
I find these to be very reliable. Trips every time. I did find GPIO4 to be flacky so I dont use it.

Verify the motion sensor is capturing the events.
When it doesn’t turn ON, is the sensor being tripped?

If sensor is zwave, maybe it has minimum time between trips?
This would cause issue were timer not reset or motion not detected and light not turned on.

I’ve had an Ecolink PIR working for about a week - so far it has been very reliable and was easy to setup.

1 Like

I believe the timeout is 4 minutes on that device right? Do you just set an automation to turn off the lights when the state goes to off or do you set a timer and just turn off when the timer is done counting down??

I’m using it for a couple of differenbt things depending on time of day, but in one case I trigger a scene with motion, and use the timed script method to turn it off - seems to be working well so far. The sensor is set to 4 minutes before it will re-trigger, yes, and I have the lights stay on for 5 minutes.

1 Like

ok that’s great info. i used the time script method before and i’ve had mixed results with it. last night i decided to try and give the motion sensors i have another try. I modified the time to off from 15 sec to 3 minutes. Then i created 2 separate automations. one for the state, to: “off” which turns the lights off when the detector goes to the off state and the other for the to: “on” to turn the lights on. Seems to be working a little better, but i will see if it continues.

1 Like