I am starting to design my HA/ smart home setup. We are working on our own newly build home, so now we are running the question; how can we trigger certain actions like lights. (or maybe something else in the future)
Basicly we want to be able to switch lights in certain rooms based on actions like movement or doors opening/closing. One thing me and my BF are not looking forward to is a lot of different sensors all glued to the wall with dubble sided tape and battery’s that need to be changed every now and then. We want it to be smart, so we don’t want to use a lot of light switches. (maybe for our parents babysitting our house every now and then but not for us)
Just like i said, we are working on our newly build home, so we are still able to run cables and install wall boxes.
So what i am looking for is HA compatible sensors like door or movement sensors that are powered by wire and maybe even controllable by the wire.
Does this even exist, if yes can you recommend and share links/tips?
You could use reed-type wired devices for contact sensors and connect them to something like Konnected.io. However, there’s a reason why even professional alarm/automation companies have transitioned largely over to wireless sensors. This can get very costly, very quickly. Not to mention the complex setup of terminating the wires to something that can process all the signals. Not to mention the fact that wired motion sensors are just UGLY (imho).
Personally, I ditched wired sensors years ago and went to wireless. With brands like Aqara that produce some really tiny sensors (the door/contact sensors blend into white doors really well and the temp/humidity sensors can be stashed away out of sight) with long battery life, it’s pretty easy to create a smart home without it looking all “techy”.
For most of my motion sensors, I use Hue motion sensors and have painted some of them to match the wall colors. The battery life on those is also fantastic (I have a couple that have been going 2+ years on the same AAA batteries they came with). I’ve also seen some clever tricks to hiding motion sensors in the ceiling by just exposing the PIR sensor and the small hole for the lux sensor and then sealing that up in the drywall.
Other than a 16 or more channel relay to stack if things are to be wired new based on the number of sensors you intend to wire up.
Your next best option is to look at smart switches that include a Motion/PIR sensor when it comes to light control in various rooms if you don’t want a separate sensor mounted; say a ceiling mounted motion sensor for the room.
Else you are looking at getting battery eliminators for supporting devices you want to power via a nearby power socket with a USB wallwart.
You could use something like this and program with ESPhome. Wire in whatever sensors / reed switches etc that you want. (They have other versions with differing I/O as well)
I hadn’t seen Konnected or Aquare before. Konnected seems to have a good selection of burgular alarm type wired sensors at reasonable prices.
Some other suggestions:
Scan the list of Integrations on the HA website. Also check out the integrations on HACS. Often new things or things I didn’t notice before pop up that are worth a look. These will, of course, already be integrated with HA.
Search on Amazon/EBay/??? for “human presence”, “IR sensor”, “occupancy”, or even “radar sensor”. You’ll be astonshed at how much stuff comes up. Then you can filter based on whether you prefer COTS at a reasonable price or more DIY-friendly stuff. I bought several different types of the radar sensors to evaluate but haven’t tried them out yet. (I want a bathroom sensor that works regardless of whether I’m showering or just making a pit stop.) The DIY oriented stuff generally requires 3/5V power and have a wired output intended to be attached to a separate controller that decides what to do when they detect something. I’ve found a lot of “radar” type sensors available really cheap on Amazon or EBay. Many claim to work when placed behind drywall, which is believable for the lower frequency ones. Some claim to be able to monitor several narrow zones to detect motion. But, definitely caveat emptor.
You didn’t mention analog sensors. They have special considerations if you’ll be running long wires. I can explain but my reply is TL;DR already.
You didn’t mention what the sensors would be connected to, but as Bill described, controller wiring is a major consideration. If you’re DIY oriented then I’d point you to RPi or make your own Teensy based controller. (I like SparkFun’s QWICC I2C stuff when cobbling a Teensy controller together.) Lots of I/O (i.e. lots of sensors per controller) and easy ways to do wired or wireless TCP/IP/MQTT, even PoE (which I think will be the “go-to” for wired infrastructure). There’s a project on CrowdSupply called “GetWired” I bookmarked a while ago that might be worth a look.
I can’t dispute what Bill said about why wireless has become the “go-to” approach for contractors and many DIY’ers. As time passes however I’m becoming even more focused on 100% wired infrastructure. I should probably buy stock in whomever makes Smurf conduit, since I’m running that virtually everywhere. The idea is to make it both future-proof AND retro-proof in case I get creamed by a bus and a normal electrician needs to come in to fix something for my wife or kids. I’m also replacing the track lighting with theater grade DMX controlled stage lighting (Industrial Chic). No doubt, however, wireless is much easier in many ways.
Another option is something like this. It is something new myself and a few other people have been working on for a few years, and I have just built my own new home and implemented it throughout.
The general idea is to use ESP based rack mounted devices with RJ45 ports along the front, which look similar to a standard rack mounted network switch.
You then run CAT5/6 cables from all your doors/windows/PIRs back to your rack, and terminate them in a standard RJ45 patch panel (like you do for normal ethernet runs).
You can then patch these to your OXRS Security Module. This will send 12V/GND down 4 of the wires, leaving 4 data wires. You can therefore power your PIR or active sensors as well as monitor their state and tamper switches etc.
I have a 32x port security module in my house and it is working fantastically well. The OXRS firmware generates MQTT payloads in JSON format. I am using cheap Chinese 12V PIRs, reed sensors and active flood sensors throughout.
If anyone has any questions I would be happy to share more details .
Just to put it out there. You dont have to use HA and take a look at Loxone. Its pretty much what are you looking for. It is whole separate ecosystem, but everything can be wired and it is much more industrial driven (certified, wired, DIN mountable etc).
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