Thoughts on solving motion sensor problem at top and bottom of stair case

1

I have a staircase in my house that turns at the end before you get to the first floor landing, so a single motion sensor can’t cover the whole staircase, depending on whether you are going up or down.

So, at the top and bottom of the staircase is an Aqara motion sensor with a lux sensor. So far, all good.

When i walk up the stairs, the motion sensor at the bottom of the stairs senses movement and turns on the stairs lights.
Similar, when I walk down the stairs, the sensor at the top triggers first and the light comes on.

However…

The stair light only comes on when its dark ‘enough’, and this is defined by the lux level sensed by the motion sensor that’s been triggered.

So if its lighter at (say) the bottom of the stairs, and I am walking up them, the lower sensor that detects me, will also NOT turn on the lights because thinks its bright enough, even though it might be darker at the other end of staircase.

So I wondered about checking both sensors and getting the lowest LUX level to decide whether or not to turn on the lights, and herein came my final problem. The LUX level is only reported by the Aqara sensor when motion is detected, so in the example above, the LUX level reported by the upstairs sensor could be hours out of date.

There are sensors that solve this problem by reporting LUX levels continuously (like the EP1), but the Aqara does not do this. I wondered if anyone had a smart way of solving this.

UPDATE:

Perhaps one thought was to use a time based approach and turn on the lights x hours after sunset.

2

If this is the case then I dont see how you are going to be able to achieve referencing both sensors and getting the lowest reading as you would in theory need to trigger both sensors for this to work.

I dont use Aqara stuff so dont know, but is there a way of waking the sensor via HA I wonder as that would I assume force an update.

Failing changing the sensors for something else that does update its values OR adding an additional sensor then I guess referencing the sun could be the easy answer - but obviously not quite as intelligent as it won’t know about that big grey cloud blocking the sun out :grinning:

3

Can you disable (or ignore) the light readings from the motion sensors? I vary the ambient light in different parts of the house with a single outside light sensor which turns on overrides for different rooms at different light levels (the overrides are threshold helpers). So the lights come on by default when movement is detected unless an override condition stops them. If you see what I mean.

Takes a bit of trial and error to set up, but works quite well.

4

I can ignore the light readings, so perhaps a ‘master’ LUX reading from an outside sensor could be the answer.

I’ve looked at other options like triggering updates from sensors, and I don’t think its possible.