Thanks for your reply. This is a nightmare lol. I’m bound to make the wrong choice
1 Like
I use the Aqara motion sensors. $18, they’ve been here working for 3 years and the battery lasts about that long also. Some are installed outdoors (but under eaves or handrails). I currently have 9, will soon be getting more.
None have failed.
(environment is pi3b+, conbee II, zha)
It’s one of those sonoff mini ones that has died. Only 3 months old. It’s the second one I’ve had die on me so I’m trying to steer clear. The one that still works has been brilliant, and that’s what’s so annoying.
Here are my experiences:
To sum it up short: get Philips Hue motion sensors. It will save you money because you won’t need to replace shitty cheap motion sensors down the road. Also the cooldown of 10 seconds is unmatched. Using Aqara with hardware mod to get a cooldown of 5 seconds is wonky and not a solution. Also using all kind of workarounds to try to counter stuff like false positives and dropped connections will get tiring very fast.
Motion sensors are the basis of your entire home since many automations revolve around them. Do not cheap out on things that need to be reliable and is used in many automations. The extra money spend is more than worth the head-ache free experience and reliability.
4 Likes
I had the exact same thing happen with my Sonoff motion sensor, replaced the battery several times on the Sonoff, and it would work for a day or so, then just get stuck on “motion detected” and would never clear. It had a ton of false alarms too, and was only a couple months old. I tossed disconnected the battery and gave up.
I recently purchased the Aqara Motion Sensor & Detector - Aqara mentioned by Ardy above. Its been much more reliable, but did disconnect once on me and needed to be manually paired again. I did just upgrade zigbee2mqtt so I assume that has something to do with it.
I’m honestly having second thoughts, there was a warning about Aqara devices on the zigbee2mqtt page not being “fully” zigbee compliant, which leads to issues. The warning is on the zigbee2mqtt link also posted above by Ardy. I would encourage you to read this thread as well before purchasing this - the poster over there had tons of problems with Aqara devices.
Another thread discussed motion sensor options, and suggested building one yourself and flashing ESP or PTVO software. I might go that route for my next one.
The Philips Hue recommended in the post above also seems to be the device that works the best and causes the least amount of trouble from what I’ve read. Its more expensive but the cost of replacing all these cheap unreliable sensors all the time might be worth it.
1 Like
Exactly my point. I would have saved money if I had purchased Hue’s from day one, instead of buying all kinds of cheap sensors. To counter random disconnects that both Sonoff and Aqara had, I installed two motion sensors per room and created a group sensor. So if one of the two saw motion, then the automation would trigger. In the case one of the two was disconnected, or didn’t trigger, then the other would see it. And then I got random false positives that turned on my light which was a new chapter of frustration.
At the end I was spending more time coming up with workarounds and getting frustrated that a light randomly was on the entire night because of a false positive, or didn’t turn on at all. Threw away all my sesnors (15+ Sonoff and Aqara’s) and got 8 Hue’s instead.
Those 8 Hue motion sensors were cheaper than the 15+ cheap sensors I got (and more because I tested different other brands as well, even shittier than Aqara and Sonoff’s).
Just get one or two Hue motion sensors and replace two other sensors. Test them for a month. If they prove to be stable, you will realize why Aqara and Sonoff are cheaper and Hue isn’t expensive but worth the price.
Keep in mind: this is not just me. My brother had the exact same experiences in his home, so he replaced everything with Hue as well and hasn’t been happier since. And the link I posted shows many many many more people have issues with Sonoff motion sensors. Aqara is worse in my experience since it has an extremely long cooldown (which is also very weird how between Aqara sensors one has 1min, other 2min and even 5min cooldowns). Complete mess.
1 Like
I’ve read something on zigbee2mqtt site that if the hue sensor loses its connection and needs to be re-paired, that it needs to be done with the Philips hub. Have any of you guys come across this problem?
Thanks for everyone’s help btw
and on a side note… I also started pairing my motion sensors into a group and calling the group in my automations. That cured all my little annoyances with motion sensors… redundancy is a wonderful thing.
2 Likes
Not the case, at least not now (maybe old info?). I had an issue with a Hue sensor when I switched coördinators. I just deleted the Hue and the paired it again without issues (using zigbee2mqtt).
Just what I wanted to hear. Hue it is then. Thanks for your help
1 Like
Had no issues with the Aqara so far. I have it running for like 8-9 month. I use it to detect just “occupation” for the kitchen, to clean with my Roborock afterwards if noone is there anymore 
The TuYa one has a similar task (I got 3 of them) but they are currently only supported on the edge version (I think that’s still the case).
Do we talk about an indoor or an outdoor application?
1 Like
Sorry, I should have said….I need them for indoors
I am currently trying to find the best motion sensor for me
I have sonoff mini zigbee and philips hue zigbee for indoor.
It is true that sonoff mini has false start-ups (in my case from day one), in addition to an update interval of between 60 and 150 seconds.
The philips sensor seems stable, but sometimes the range is 7 meters and in others it is 2 meters, in addition to a very small angle of view, but it has a good update interval (adjustable up to 10 seconds, normally all the others are every 60 seconds).
I will receive aqara soon and do tests, I will also apply the hack so that it updates every 5 seconds instead of a minute, I hope to get good results, otherwise I will opt for hue.
1 Like
I’d be interested to see the test results from the aqara
I use the aqara as well. Once set up I’m extremely pleased with the devices, but two “minor” issues. Sometimes pairing is a pain in the a… especially if the sensors had been paired already with another Zigbee network. You just need to try again and again and eventually it will pair 
Another issue is that all my Xiaomi Aqara body and door sensors will not switch to the next Zigbee endpoint (like another zigbee router) in case the current router goes down (power outage). This should be the whole idea behind a Zigbee mesh, but Aqara sensors will always just want to connect to ONE router (or coordinator) and stay with it. At least they do automatically re-connect once the power outage is over. Thus I monitor my router availability with Z2M (which is running behind a UPS/USV)
You’re right, it should be the whole idea of a mesh. The problem comes from the fact these Aqara sensors don’t fully support the zigbee standard, which is why I wouldn’t buy anymore of them beyond the one motion sensor I got. I suppose if you know all this going in and are ok with it, go for it, but caveat emptor.
1 Like
I like them because they are really tiny and they have a very fast reaction. work great with zigbee2mqtt (once paired)
My favorite is the Smartthings satellite dish (newest) looking motion sensor. Works great. Can not find them anymore, at least cheap.
My current great favorite, available, is the Linkind motion sensor (amazon). That works really great too, zero trouble to add to HA, and all it does, motion and battery power.
Thank you everyone for the responses and quick replies! I really do appreciate it. For sanity sake I walked around and pushed the sync buttons to make sure the batteries weren’t dead and VOILA! they all showed back up in Home Assistant right away. We will see how long this lasts though.
Thanks