Philips Hue Motion Sensor Duds

Hardware
1

I heard good things about the Philips Hue Motion Sensor (9290030675), so I bought a 2-pack.

I’m using Zigbee2MQTT. The first one I added worked perfectly and I was able to use it to set up an automation. When I added the second one several days later, it would not work correctly. It would connect, but never detect motion no matter the sensitivity settings.

I swapped batteries, did a factory reset, deleted and re-added it, deleted both sensors and only re-added the bad one. Nothing made a difference. So I returned them - had to return both since it was sold as a 2-pack - and ordered a new pair.

When the new pair arrived, I added them within minutes of each other. Just like before, the first one works perfectly, and the second one behaves just like the bad one from the first pair.

Again I swapped batteries, did a factory reset, deleted and re-added it, deleted both sensors and only re-added the bad one. Nothing made a difference.

I figure the odds of getting 2 pairs that behave like this are low. So maybe there is some software problem, or I’m doing something wrong.

Or is the failure rate that high on these things? Any suggestions on other things to try?

Thanks!

2

My general experience with Philips Hue products is very good. I have a few dozen of them; all lights, except one. My outdoor, Philips Hue, motion sensor must see the grass grow or the general rotation of the earth because it sees motion everywhere, regardless of settings.

It would seem you’re not alone in your frustration.

I wish I could help more. I always figured they made motion sensors too sensitive to ensure their lights were always on and needed replacing faster. They do make good lights.

MrGrey.

3

Location, perhaps? Swap them over. If the “dud” one now works and the “good” one doesn’t, the position is beyond the reach of your Zigbee network. You need more routers.

4

I was having some issues with Hue motion sensors, primarily the outdoor ones but not exclusively. They seem pretty stable since adding this to my configuration.yaml file (advised in another topic on the subject):

zha:
  zigpy_config:
    ezsp_policies:
      TRUST_CENTER_POLICY: 0x0002 # ALLOW_UNSECURED_REJOINS     
      # WARNING: this effectively opens a permanent backdoor into your Zigbee network!!!
      # While it won't allow an attacker to passively capture your network key, it will
      # allow them to "rejoin" the network and the coordinator will blindly send it just the same.
      # Added the following re dropped Hue Motion Sensors on 5.30.2024
      # b4, b2, b3 and w1 Hue motion sensors were dropping
      # UNTIL this was implemented

Bear in mind I’m using ZHA, not Zigbee2MQTT - I don’t know if that makes a difference.

[b1, b2, b3 are outdoor Hue (black), w1 is the indoor hue (white)]

5

It couldn’t be location. I had them sitting right next to each other while testing.

I still had the bad one sitting on my desk and yesterday I noticed the LED that indicates motion detection was lighting up. I checked in HA and sure enough, it was detecting motion. According to the activity history, it came alive at 3:17PM. A day later now and it’s still going strong.

The only thing that has changed since I first posted is updates to various bits of HA, I don’t know what happened at the moment that it started working.

In any case, they’re both working now. Thanks for the replies.