I got the Tradfri motion sensor up and running without any problems and put it in my kitchen, so that a light came on whenever went in.
I then set HA to turn off the kitchen light once the motion sensor had not detected any movement for 60 seconds - I did this, as I read on another thread that this particular device has quite a long cooldown period.
At first, the sensor worked fine but then it started playing up - sometimes, I walk into the kitchen and the light never comes on and I have to manually override it.
I was just wondering whether an Aqara sensor might give a better experience (and what other people’s experience of the Tradfri have been like).
I had the same issue when i put my automation to turn off the lights at a minute, i think because the cooldown is also around a minute it gets into trouble… Now i set it to two minutes and it always works perfectly , 100/100 times.
I have a aqara motion sensor, so maybe tradfri has diffrent timing, but worth trying to set it at two minutes
The Tradfri motion sensor cooldown period only starts when it detects “no more movement”, what it does is reset the timer countdown each time it detects movement while active.
Also watch out for Night/Day setting… the buttons on the back… if you have it in night settings it will only send Motion detected and motion not detected when its dark. If you set it to Day mode it will send motion detected and motion not detected all the time and you will have to control it with automation.
The Ikea motion sensor can also be contected directly to the light thus not using the zigbee co-ordinator.
You can look up zigbee binding.
Thanks so much for that - this makes a huge difference to my understanding of how the device actually works and almost certainly explains why I am having issues.
So am I correct in thinking that the cooldown period is 2.5 minutes (I have read that it could even be 3)?
Assuming it to be 2.5, should I set the “motion detected” to trigger my light on and then have “no motion detected” trigger the light to go off after 3 minutes (which gives) 30 seconds of overlap?
This should (I hope) mean that if someone leaves the room but then returns within the colling off period, there should never be a chance when they could be left in the dark.
Also, I was under the impression that the night/day setting was not available (i.e. it only works with the Ikea hub). If I can get that to work, even better!
Bit of a further update on this - I did some testing and the cooldown period on my Tradfri motion sensor does run from the time that it senses motion. Having checked the log on HA, it senses motion and then does nothing at all for exactly 3 minutes, before returning to “no motion” detected.
However, what is interesting, is that I looked at logs throughout the night (as my cats have a tendency to set the thing off) and I noted that whilst, on the whole, there was a 3 minute gap between the sensor sensing motion and then detecting no motion, there were a few times when the gap was increased to 6 minutes.
Cannot quite explain this - do you think the device is faulty or are they just not as reliable as the Aqara versions?
Edit - I have kept a further eye on the log and noted that there was an instance whereby the sensor detected motion and then did not record no motion for 22 minutes. However, after this, the time gap was back to the usual 3 minutes.
It seems that there is an intermittent fault here - I cannot work out whether the sensor, itself, is at fault or whether there is a problem with my server picking up the “no motion” message.
As far as I am aware the Ikea motion sensor has a built in timer… meaning it does not even speak to the Zigbee controller while the timer is running… this is because Ikea actually ment for the motion sensor to work directly with the light, meaning that idea built all the timming and logic into the motion sensor itself. At first I had the Ikea Tradfri Gateway as a zigbee controller and the motion sensor doesnt even appear within the Ikea app you can only bind it to a light within the ikea app… when I go the Sonoff Zigbee USB 3 stick I could see all of the details about the motion sensor but as far as I know the controller still uses its internal logic… I have set mine up in my bathroom as such… I trigger the light to turn on (Hue Bulb) when it detects motion… there are no timers set…just straight forward turn on… then I have an automation that turns the light off when the motion sensor sends a “occupancy stopped detecting motion” also with no timers or conditions…it is set to turn light off…I also have night mode set on the motions sensor as I dont want the light to turn on during the day/dark. As the logic is internal I very very seldom have the light turn off when someone is in the bathroom. I sometimes get a strange behaviour where the light doesnt turn off at all and for some reason never ran/sent the co-ordinator the no motion detected signal.
I am thinking of going back to connecting the motion sensor directly to the light as that was the most stable.,…but I am a control freak and like to see the automation trigger.
PS…another problem with timers internal to the motion sensor as well as a different timer in automation is overlap. For example…you trigger the light on… timer internal runs…then it triggers automation with its own timer for say three minutes, so in fact the light stays on for 5 min… lets say you go back into the room AFTER the motion sensors internal sensor has reset but not before automations timer has finished… so the ikea sensor triggers another ON automation but the light it still on…so after a minute the light goes off because your automation was still running its timer. then you have to jump around to get the sensor to turn on…but as far as the motion sensor is concerned the light is ON and it just resets its internal on timer so your ON automation will not trigger. Sorry for a long winded example.
The trick was not only resetting a timer, each time new motion is detected whilst the light was already on but, most importantly, only turn the light off when the cooling off period has successfully finished.
Works perfectly now - seems that my main mistake was thinking that the Tradfri has a consistent cooling down period of 3 minutes. Whilst it usually has, you can see here:
