Not a pet friendly should fyi
How are you connecting power to the devices? Are you running long USB cables from an outlet to each one in the ceiling above? Or is it a wire trained up the walls from an outlet on the floor? I just wonder how people are cutting into their house and running all these cables and how much of this is ālegalā or is it just mcguiver
Absolutely not a 24GHZ Tuya ZY-M100 zigbee version. I cant make it mine work. And there isnt a quirk available for it right now.
I have an Aqara FP2 and its work really well. Some false detection when people lying in the sofa but if combined with PIR it is a god
Hello
I need some advice. I am using the following mmWave sensors:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805466230531.html?spm=a2g0o.order_detail.order_detail_item.2.57baf19cJqnVT2&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa
First Iāve installed them on the second floor in the house (I could do it by myself, because of the attic accessibility. Everything works pretty well (light sensor can be more accurate and sensitive, but it is still usable)
Based on this experience I decided to expand success and installed same sensors in the first floor in every room and bathroom. Becuase it is a ceiling sensor, I needed electrician to cut drywall and āfishā line wires. Long story short - they are working (expected, based on the upper floor experience). But what was unpleasant surprise, they can be triggered from the upper floor, just walking on the hardwood floor above the sensor. I tried pretty much everything with the settings - nada. I was under impression that these sensors supposed to be directional. In any event: does someone has the same experience? Is there any way to fix it with any kind of āshieldingā of 24G sensor from upper floor?
This is the sensor
Thanks in advance
mmWave is directional, but extremely sensitiveā¦ hence the name āmillimeterā because it can detect very small things moving or even changing shape in very small amounts. The radar waves will travel through walls and other non metallic or similar materials. Iāve found that if I donāt restrict the range of the mmwave it will go through any standard home construction wall and pickup movement in the room next door, or if on a wall, it will pick up movement in the floor above or below and through the wall.
Given the above observations of many who have posted hereā¦ Likely what youāre experiencing is simply movement of the floor/ceiling structures as people walk which in turn vibrates or actually moves the sensor up/down in relation to objects that are stationary in the room below. I tried something similar with mmWave sensors mounted inside an existing ceiling fixture and found that the vibration in the ceiling was too great, I could identify nothing moving in the room, tried other rooms, tried other sensorsā¦ I did find that closer to the wall, but still mounted to the ceiling seemed to be ok. Mounted to the wall provides the least chance of āfloorā bounce, causing false positives in my experience. Have you tried temp placement (not cutting, mounting) and more toward walls or beams if a room has them?
Middle of a room, with a room above is going to be very likely to conduct floor-to-ceiling movement that the sensor will āseeā as movement in the room.
Iāve been doing some testing with these Tuya zigbee 5GHz presence sensors.
Wall mount version (5V):
Fast response to walking in range (tested out to 5m).
Can not detect me sleeping from 1.5m away aimed directly at me and set to max sensitivity.
Can not reliably detect me sitting on the couch from 3m away.
Does detect the movement of a tree branch outside my window (false positive).
Draws very little current (30mA) which is nice. I could power it from my distributed DC wiring.
Ceiling Mount Version (240V)
Thereās no way I am supplying this thing with 240V. The voltage creepage distances are insufficient and the terminal blocks are terrible. I might modify it for 5V or 12DC operation then give it a test.
Iām not buying any more of the 5GHz versions. The one wall mount version I have will be ok for presence detection in the kitchen when Iām standing at the stove stirring something and my PIR occasionally turns off the lights forcing me to do a little dance.
But as general room presence detection for sitting or sleeping they are no good.
I also might test the 24GHz for sleeping presence detection but placement that does not also look out my window will be tricky.
Just commenting on the sleeping presence, if you look at some of the actual guides for placement of the 24GHz models, they show under or over a bed as an example, Iāve tried 60GHz and 24GHz on walls for an entire room that includes a bed and just like you, it fails to consistently register sleeping presence. But Iām sure under the bed it would work, especially the 60GHz models as they can pickup very subtle breathing and even heartrate. But neither can do this from an angle or at a distance. They must be very close and facing the human as if standing, hence placement under the bed looking up as in device mfgr examples.
Fromt DFRobot:
You are rightā¦it is vibration. This is just Physics and nothing can be done here. Everything is relative and in US, our houses are from lamber, so using mmWave sensor sensitive enough to pick breathing, will trigger floor vibration.
I used less sensitive type
It works ok for small rooms, like bathroom and toilets, but not for bigger room.
So, I am back to square 1. I can try to place one under the bed, but it should have companion (on the wall, or less sensitive in the ceiling)
I ordered DFRobot sensors, will play a bit, however, I do not have hopeā¦again it is just Physics
Maybe you could use more sensors, by putting one in the ceiling of every room above until you reach the roof, and apply extra logic on each floor: something like āif someone is in the room above, ignore ceiling sensorā.
This would only help if the rooms above cannot be independently occupied, but for a one person home with the bedroom above the living room it could work ok, as the occupant can only be in one place?
I have a family and a giant dog (Grate Dane). And this is work around, not universal solution. I was thinking about one sensor on the wall and one under the bed. But againā¦this is brute force solution
Video camera and face recognition. Yes, it is expensive but not as much as you might think. Many security camera have this feature.
There is a new device Theia that uses thermal imaging and radar to detect presence. It also uses BT Beacon to ID said presence. The device should be for sale by November. Senziio.com
Assuming that it is not vapour-ware, that thing is not going to be cheap.
Any new info on this ?
I tried the Xiaomi battery presence sensor mmwave. It works well enough but does struggle sometimes when lying on the sofa.
Wonder if CES will give us some new sensors
The best way I tried is to build your own presence detection sensor based on esp32 board and ld2410 sensor. You can attach and light sensor to it also. There is a great esphome page for setting this thing up.
The downside is that you have to build it by yourself, buy all components, put everything together, adjust code to suit your needs and find or print case for it. But it is doable and those devices are much better then most you can buy of the shelf.
Is that due to the sensor being the best ? Iāve just ordered a Apollo msr2 which I believe has that sensor or at least very similar to it.
Well on the end of the day everything comes to a sensor that have to do all the work. I dont say that sensor you ordered is a bad one, I just want to say that, in my experience , if you want a good sensor then build it your self.
I may test some of these. But I currently use Thirdreality Zigbee motion detectors in all the rooms and they work great. For example, if motion starts turn on lights. If no motion in 5min AND TV not on, turn lights off.
I use the Bayesian integration to figure out which room Iām probably in, based on BT detection, motion, time of day, what devices are in use, etc.
Itās surprisingly accurate - for me, more so than any single type of device - and it costs nothing. You build your model around whatever devices you already have. Wellā¦ it costs quite a lot in terms of the time it takes to figure it out, but otherwiseā¦
Thank you for sharing. Itās great everyone can have a different solution that works for them and share so that others easily learn about options.