SONOFF Human Presence sensor is Coming!

Hardware
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Last week, SONOFF released a new zigbee sensor SNZB-06P. Finally, The Human presence sensor is coming!! And it is absolutely HA friendly.

This sensor can detect human presence, even if you’re completely still. It’s especially handy when you’re reading in your office or taking a shower in the bathroom, ensuring that the lights won’t inadvertently switch off. This is in stark contrast to traditional PIR (Passive Infrared) sensors, which only detect motion based on changes in infrared radiation. If you’re stationary, the PIR sensor assumes you’ve left and turns off the lights.

The best part? It is incredibly affordable, priced at just $15. This is quite a steal, considering that other presence sensors on the market often come with much higher price tags.

BUT at the same time, I noticed there are some limitations…

  1. It detects all the movements, like pets, moving curtains, and sweeping robots…
  2. The light sensor within the SNZB-06P can only judge between light and dark conditions on the eWeLink app. And can’t be used in HA…I believe this is a design that imitates some motion lights, which only light up at night.
  3. Minimum Detection timeout can only be 1 minute, which means that you need to wait for 1 minute to turn off the lights after you’re leaving. Actually, this sensitivity is a bit low. I can see from Mat’s video that Sonoff is optimizing it.(hhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m66Mv_azIDk) Perhaps we will get a firmware upgrade in the future??? Hope so. BUT unfortunately, it is currently not possible to set it on HA.
  4. It does not provide location information, possibly because it uses a 5.8GHZ low-frequency radar, The accuracy of the radar is not suitable for precise distance or position analysis.

On balance, it’s more than enough to replace PIR for me. I will use it in my bathroom. At least my bathroom light won’t turn off on its own anymore : )

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I think the cost of this could mean that this device will transform presence detection.

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This looks like a really neat device! I will probably try to pick one or two up now that I’m finally getting around to adding more zigbee to my home.

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I was so stoked about this present sensor, especially for this price, when I saw all the YouTube videos about it.

Unfortunately, I need the light sensor for all my usecases.

Let’s hope the illuminance entity will come to Home Assistant with a firmware update or zha-update.

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I ordered two, one for bathroom and one for study room. Considering that the light sensor is not available in HA for now, I will also use time conditions to trigger the lights.
Is it suitable for your use cases?

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Hope it is better quality then their SNZB-03

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Mine just got tracking info, has anyone received theirs yet? I’m excited to see how well this works relative to the Aqara FP1s I have (which work very well but are still expensive).

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I ordered two of the Sonoff SNZB-06P sensors and received them today.
It paired immediately with Zigbee2MQTT.

That’s the end of the good news.

The only sensors I can see is “Occupancy” and “Link Quality”:

SNZB-06P
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Worse, it never goes “occupancy: false”. It is always “true”.

OK, maybe I need to add it to my eWelink app…

I updated my app then scanned the QR code on the device. Again, instant recognition by the app. The app went well until…

Screenshot_20231114-181655_eWeLink
Screenshot_20231114-181655_eWeLink1080×2400 115 KB

I guess that my ConBee dongle doesn’t count?

Has anyone gotten past this step in the eWelink app without a Sonoff hub?

UPDATE. “Worse, it never goes ‘occupancy: false’. It is always ‘true’.” is INCORRECT.

In my test setup, I forgot that it sees through walls and my dog was on the bed on the other side of the wall.

But still, without being able to use the eWelink app I can’t “tune” the sensitivity. And the timing? It takes 8 minutes from ‘on’ to time out and turn off.

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I received mine in the mail today. It was picked up immediately by ZHA and appears to be working as expected. I have it running by my office computer and it stays on noticing my presence, when I am away for 1 minute the status changes to not occupied.
Under Manage Device I found a cluster that seems to correspond to the 60sec delay between occupied and not occupied. Not sure if this is something that can be adjusted or not.

Update: I wrote a value of 30 and it changed to 30seconds as expected. Will experiment with shorter value to see how well it behaves.

Update 2: It seems 10 seconds and 20 seconds do not work, I stop getting any changes to the occupied status when I set with those values, maybe 30seconds is the minimum.

image
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I think this is the same setting I found in Zigbee2MQTT:

Sonoff Presence- Settings (specific)
Sonoff Presence- Settings (specific)1191×506 97.5 KB

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11

Was looking into investing in one of these, but heard that it only exposes one entity?

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For the price, it seems an ideal solution for detecting if someone is using the bathroom or taking a shower without the lights turning off.

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This is what I bought it for but “Occupancy” expose in Z2M just stays as Occupied and never changes.

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According to the above post, it seems to be working under ZHA, so these should perfect for bathroom presence detection. I am guessing the MQTT driver still needs some work, but will most likely be addressed when the sensors are available in quantity.

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states does report the important one:
binary_sensor.sonoff_presence_occupancy
is either “On” or “Off”.

I use that in an automation:

trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - binary_sensor.sonoff_presence_occupancy
    from: "off"
    to: "on"
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The status of mine basically never changes. Even if I put it in a box and move out of the rooms. Might need to reset and add it again to Z2M.

I bought it for use in a Bathroom. I’m already using the wasp in a box idea and that works great but I’m a single guy and sometimes use the bathroom without closing the door (and I want the lights to stay on), lol.

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Status? Where are you looking? Do you mean “State” as reported in dev tools/states?

Here is what I see in Z2M “Exposes”:
sonoff

Don’t forget, mmwave sensors see through walls and floors.

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Mine shows offline and occupied and never changes, but I can update it.

image
image911×643 35.4 KB

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What do you see in dev tools/states? This is the important one because this is how Home Assistant sees the sensor.

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Yup, that’s exactly where I’m looking. It’s been stuck in as Occupied for a long time now. I’m going to try to reset it and see if that helps, I’ve been using an EPLite and that’s been doing the job.

Edit- I’m referring to the screenshot from z2m.