The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Detecting occupancy of a room to switch light
G4nd41f
Member
My plan is to switch the light in a room on and off based on whether someone is in a room or not and based on the light level. The last should be very easy, but the first worries me a bit. I have several ideas:
1) Using a motion sensor in a room:
I already tried the standard motion detector which work with a pyroelectric sensor. These detectors have the disadvantage that they are not very sensitive and you do need to move a lot to be detected. Therfore they are useless if you sit on couch or at a table. However there are also ones which work with ultrasonic or microwave sensors. Has anyone experience with those? Do you know any compatible with homey
2) Counting the number of people with two motion sensors at the door
As suggested by Fibaro, one could use two motion sensors - one at the outer side of the rooms door, one a the inner - and based on in which order they are activated increase or decreased to the number people in a room. I saw that there are cheap battery operated 433MHz motion sensors (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Motion-Sensor-Security-System/dp/B00BQN87XM ). Is it possible to use those in connection with Homey to do the job? Do you know whether each of these sensors send the same signal or whether they have some kind of ID configurable e.g. by jumpers?
3) Using the signal of you mobile phone:
I recall reading somewhere reading a post from Emile in this forum that homey would be able to track your position in your flat/house based on the wifi/bt signal strength of your mobile phone, but I can't find this anymore. @Emile Is there anything new on this?
This idea would have the drawback that you always would have to have your mobile phone in your pocket and it would not work with visitors.
What do you think? Do you have any other suggestions?
Comments
Fibaro motion sensors are very sensitive. I switch lights in rooms and hallways if theshe places are occupied for a short time (walking throug etc). This works perfect and there is like no delay between entering a room and lights switching on.
I am considering this scenario for places with less movement by occupants like kitchen and livingroom:
1. If movement in living room: switch lights On
2. If movement in room next to living room: start 15 minute timer for living room and switch lights off after timer.
3. If movement in living room: cancel timer.
This way it's not necessary to be noticed by the livingroom motion sensor every x minutes, but only between 15 minutes after someone left the room.
Ok, but for this solution I would require an additional fibaro home server, right? This would be probably the easiest option but also the most expensive one.
No, I expect this to be possible with the Homey as zwave controller. Maybe the logic is too complex for the standard flow editor, in that case I'll write an app for it.
With the Fibaro Homecenter you also need to code this kind of logic with ULA scripts.
Would be very helpful
https://forum.athom.com/discussion/2714/need-help-with-fibaro-motion-sensor-lights-off-auto which also has more info about switching the lights on independent of Homey.
What do I need to also let this work with the physical light switches? I mean that I also want to be able to use the normal light switches, but Homey should be aware of this. So lights can be switched by motion sensor, but also by normal light switch.
You can turn on the light with the switch or tell homey to put on the light.
I would recommend using momentary switches (aka puls switches) just easyer to use/program.
Please keep sharing your knowledge, it helps a lot!