My goal now is to find the best way of detecting when somebody is using a room and when there is nobody there.
Motion detection does not seem an option, as you can be reading in the room and thus motion detectors won’t detect your presence.
Systems based in BLE beacons from the mobile don’t seem a good option, as many times we left the mobile in a room and go to another one.
So, which is the best way to detect when sombody is using a room of the house?
I would like an economic system.
I will be happy with a sensor that can be connected to tasmota, too, as there will be a tasmota device in each room to measure temperature and other tasks.
I use motion detectors and use a paradigm that works well with the issue of someone not moving (for my use case anyway):
When motion is detected, (re)start a timer (typically 30 - 60 minutes).
When the time is started or restarted, turn the lights on if not already on.
When the timer completes, turn the lights off.
So if the timer is set to 60 minutes, someone can sit in the room for a full hour without moving before the lights go off - but as soon as they move, the 60 minute timer restarts. I put a slider on my dashboards to be able to adjust the timer duration, and a drop-down to enable or disable the related automation.
It seems that the only sensors that can detect a human in the room not moving are those based in radar Mmwave.
But they are not all that simple to configure and calibrate and are quite expensive.
Motion alternatives don’t seem too useful for presence, more for alarm uses.
Bluetooth based sensors seem cheap but they are based on the presencen of a gadget, not the human that owns it.
Not an easy task it seems… may be some kind of combination.
I am not thinking on lights, but on room heating, changing set temp to a lower value when there is nobody in the room and to confort when there comes somebody and stays there.
I recently installed this aliexpress mwave (zigbee) presence sensors and they are very good. Detection time similar to pir and presence is very reliable.
I no longer set timers or any of the other workarounds for pir sensors.
Walk in light stays on. Walk out light goes off.
Highly recommended.
I will try to put a PIR cheap sensor in tasmota device to see how it works (it came with an arduino kit to play electronics).
But the problem with pir is that it only works when you move, good for detecting when somebody comes in an aisle or room but don’t think it would work to detect if you are in your room reading or seeing TV.
MmWave seems the promising technology, but too expensive just to detect whether heating must be on or off, that is the use I have in mind now, to put use a confort temp (day) when somebody is there or a low (night) temp when there is nobody during certain periods of the day.
You need one in each room and that is too much (add it to the valves, bridge etc).
I installed 12 in the ceiling. They are small and they sit flushed against the surface. Almost invisible.
And installed 1 in the wall in a room where there’s a ceiling fan so I could angle it downwards and prevent false triggers. It also works perfect. Moreover I put it behind the curtains, so it’s completely invisible and it detects as if it had uninterrupted line of sight.
Additionally they’re mains powered so they’re also very good zigbee routers (strengthening the mesh)
These devices are really very good and at USD25 they’re a bargain.
The ecobee thermostat has presence sensors, but they are meant to not be instantaneous. They don’t trigger on or off instantaneously, but rather, try to detect if the room is in use. If you pair automations with them as a condition, you can maybe tweak the instant/not-so-instant aspects of a room. But you need an ecobee, and the sensors are ridiculously overpriced.
