I’m starting a thread for these. I was curious enough about it to buy one.
I’ve edited this first post as I’ve tested it and learnt more.
My review at this point is " ~ do not buy!". Perhaps I expected too much from it.
I got mine for 70AUD (50USD) including shipping.
Key learnings so far:
Has a WBR3 chip, meaning it can’t be flashed with ESPHome, but people who know more about these things than me reckon it’s a relatively easy swap. Lots of easy to access pins/ports.
I’m tinkering with trying to intercept messages with the available pins/ports, but don’t really know what I’m doing and haven’t had any success yet. I guess there is some chance that it’s Tuya’s software implementation is ordinarily and the hardware could be salvaged if we could DIY the firmware.
Nearly got one of these but sometimes find Aliexpress listings a bit misleading. Looks like it is in-fact a radar sensor and not a PIR though so a good listing! Looking forward to see your review and how well it integrates into HA (if at all?)
Then I think I’ll see if I can connect a D1 mini to say the debugging port and see if I can receive UART messages using the ESPHome Tuya MCU component.
After seeing how that goes, I might think about whether I can run a ESP in parallel, or try my first chip swap.
I’ll drip feed some of my testing into this post. I’m mucking around with it now via Tuya app first.
Superficially it initially seemed to work as expected. App says detection times should be instant and away detection should be about a minute. That seemed broadly correct.
I’m pretty sure it detects through walls. I’ve got it in my bedroom with the door closed, and I’m testing by walking into the adjacent bathroom. Consistently triggers a detection. Disappointing. I believe others have experienced this with similar sensors, but I might research that a bit more. There’s no options to dial in sensitivity in the app. Very limited options for anything. Again, disappointing.
I’ll test a bit more and maybe see if I can check out the Tuya MCU datapoints. Maybe there’s some backend easy to set/filter detection sensitivity.
Hello ,
I have received mine yesterday, and they are pretty sensitive. I did find that something strange. i was not in the room and it keept detecting presence for an hour. maybe because i have moved it and disconnected it from the wifi and it was still adjusting… i dont know.
the positives is that this is way more sensitive from a regular motion sensor. Also i have a KNX presence sensor that goes off as soon as i stand still. This one is still detecting motion. while im here typing this.
But yes, Standing still reading a book, it will not detect anyone…
hum… i am here stand still on my laptop, and yes, if i completly stand still after one minute it doenst detect… but that is not realistic. we move our hand and touch our faces and hair… so far for me this is doing a really good job!
Sleep test #2 with more thoughtful sensor placement. I’m unimpressed by the results. They’re basically not useful to me as is. Definitely not able to reliably detect breathing.
This is deal-breaker #1 for me as it makes it unsuitable for reliable room presence detection)
