Sharing My Universal Presence Sensor Project
Hi everyone! 
I’m excited to share a small project I’ve been using for almost two years now.
This project, which I created in early 2023, has been a reliable addition to my smart home setup. While it’s far from perfect and still in its first iteration (I never found the motivation to refine it further since it worked well for my needs), I hope someone out there will find it useful.
Back when I started, presence sensors for Home Assistant were both expensive and hard to source. To address this, I developed my own solution using Hi-Link LD2410 radar sensors paired with ESP01 modules.
Highlights
- Below is a render of the design and a picture of the first assembled board:
- For more details, including the Gerber files, BOM, and setup instructions, check out the GitHub repository.
Performance
To be honest, this project has outperformed my expectations. For instance, one sensor is installed in my bathroom—a place where false negatives are not an option—and it controls the lights flawlessly.
Installations
Here are some examples of how I’ve deployed the sensor in my house:
- Bathroom (Controls the lights)
- Under My Work Desk (Controls a 12V LED strip that lights my keyboard)
- You can see the sensor wired to the LED strip
- Closet (Controls the lights)
- Internal View of the Sensor
Notes
- PIR Sensor Limitations
While the pictures include a PIR sensor, I do not recommend using it. It caused a lot of false positives and negatives and did not perform reliably. After extensive testing, I found that the radar sensor alone is fast and reliable, rendering the PIR sensor unnecessary for my setup. - Configurable Design
The sensor is highly configurable:- It can directly connect to addressable or simple LED strips (the original intent of the project).
- Other peripherals can be tied to the ESP01 GPIOs for custom use cases.
- Minimal Requirements
The absolute minimal configuration requires:- A PCB (Gerber files available in the repo).
- An ESP01 module.
- An LD2410 sensor.
- A single resistor to enable the ESP.
Final Thoughts
I hope this project proves useful to someone besides me!
If there’s enough interest, I might find the time to refine it and implement the TODO list from the repository in future iterations.
Feel free to check out the repo, experiment with the design, and share your thoughts or improvements!