I’ve installed a few of these switches with the hope they would provide occupancy detection for rooms. I’ve had a few issues with them including unreliable updates and duplicate entities showing up due to encapsulation and/or multi channel devices. However, I never received updates from the alarm endpoints and sent an email to Jasco about motion updates and thought I would share the response in case others were considering the switches.
Presently the motion sensor switches do not have that capability but our product managers are working with our current hubs to either see if the present switches may or if the next updated series of switches will have that capability. We are always working to improve our products and thank you for your inquiry and support.
I of course expressed interest in updated firmware (and tool to update) and asked to be notified which I haven’t received a response to yet. Had I known motion updates weren’t sent to the hub, I wouldn’t have bought these.
Thanks for sharing! I was planning on purchasing these and had assumed I could trigger events from motion.
Do you know if there is anyway to set the brightness from the hub when lights are off? I was planning on putting this in the bathroom and being able to set how bright the lights turned on based on whether lights in the bedroom, etc were on or off.
I have some workarounds that If an automation turns the switch on I set a boolean to indicate so; and I have another automation that if the switch turns on with a condition on the boolean is off it sets a motion boolean that turns off when the switch turns off…
Not optimal but works with the upside of not being battery powered and being a separate blob on the wall.
I bought this switch because of the built in motion with the intent of getting it to work with HA and moving away from SmartThings… I can not get a motion trigger from it. I removed the switch from HA and joined it to SmartThings … patched in the in the device handler … and viola … motion detection. I am still confused how it can work with SmartThings and yet looking at the HA log… I can’t see a motion trigger. I can see the switch coming on. Just giving some feedback and seeking some insight.
Yes, that is the “local only” I mentioned; the motion is not exposed to HA. Wonder how SmartThings see’s it… Perhaps there is some flag they are picking up that HA is missing.
I have several of these in my home, and the PIR device shows up as a sensor. I use this without an issue for presence detection in these rooms for several months, and I trigger lights or scene changes using the notifications from these sensors. You need to set config parameter 3 (Operation Mode) to Manual. This will send changes in the PIR sensor over zwave. Sorry for the late reply - I hope this helps!
Just to clarify, without any custom components, or running a different zwave branch, you are able to use the motion sensor from these switches in your auotmations? If so, that’s great, I stayed away from these because it looked like people were unable to use the motion sensors as a sensor without hacks or workarounds.
What version of HA are you running? Just curious, how fast does it go from on to off? Is that configurable?
No custom magic on the zwave side, no workarounds. Just configure the the Operation Mode to manual, and you start getting the notifications.
I would say the total latency is around 800ms to 1s for me. This is sensor -> zwave -> aeotec -> HA -> automation runs -> aeotec -> zwave -> lights and other stuff. It’s pretty good - I am happy with it.
It takes a few seconds to get the “vacancy” notification - initial motion is pretty fast. I have a “linger time” of 300 seconds in my automations after the last motion was seen so that lights don’t turn off on you when you are still for a few seconds in the bathroom, for example :-).
Just paired the GE 26931 to Home Assistant (Aeotec Z-Wave Gen 5 Dongle). It appears to add two instances of each sensor type: alarm_level, alarm_level_2, alarm_type, alarm_type_2, buglar_alarm, burglar_alarm_2, sourcenodeid, sourcenodeid_2, switch, switch_2. The only thing I’ve been able to determine is “switch” will turn the light on/off and not automatically turn off if the GE switch is set to occupancy mode. If “switch_2” is used, it will automatically shut the light off after the timeout expires based on what you have it set to.
It also appears “burglar_alarm” sends a value of 8 when it detects motion. This holds true regardless if I have the GE switch in manual or occupancy mode. I’m able to tie this into HomeKit by creating a template binary sensor that returns on when “burglar_alarm” returns the value 8, and off when it returns 0. You should be able to create automations using “burglar_alarm” regardless of the operating mode (manual or occupancy… I haven’t really messed with vacancy mode).
I just bought some of the switching 26931 (not dimming) versions, and the two switch entries that get created is definitely not a bug. One is for on/off control or status and the other changes when someone presses the physical button on the device.
I don’t have one, but am about to buy a couple. I agree, from the comments above it seems like one switch is the one based on occupancy or vacancy mode. And the other is manual on/off.
For me, I want to put this in a room where I already have a motion sensor that I use more for security that lighting. So I’d probably set the light to manual mode, and only use that switch. If I wanted lighting automation for the switch, I’d do it in a HA automation vs the switch itself for more control of timing, etc.
I do prefer motion sensors that go from ON to Off quickly, like 30 seconds or less. My current Iris zigbee motion sensors report no motion in about 30 seconds or less. That is my only concern with the zwave motion sensors. I have a couple of those too, and they all seem to have about a 3 minute delay before reporting no motion.
I only installed mine last night, but I’m seeing within a second or two to detect motion and trigger. There’s also a bunch of timing settings I haven’t tried adjusting yet.
By trigger do you mean the light switch/dimmer itself turning on? Or do you mean the motion sensor reporting as ON in HA? What about to OFF in HA? That would be interesting to see.
EDIT: I care mostly about using this motion sensor for security, so a short delay is not a huge deal for me. I know many people use these for lighting on/off, but in the room I want to install this, it’s not as much of a concern for me.
As far as I can see reports both, when the switch transitions on or off and when motion is detected or stops being detected. My switches are currently in occupancy mode, I haven’t tried changing them to manual mode and let HA triggers do it.