I have tried to make sense of the light and temperature data sent by the Philips Hue Outdoor motion sensor. As far as I can see, the data is randomly sent with no pattern and hence, pretty useless for controling things.
I asked Phillips suppport about this and they said there is no software in the motion sensor to handle ligth or temperature information. The sensors are there, if other parties would like to use them in their apps (enclosing the full response from support below).
Anyone aware of any apps someone has built using / controling the light and temperature sensors in the Phillips Hue Outdoor sensor?
Regards,
/Magnus
Full answer from Phillips Hue support regarding light and temperature sensors:
"The hardware in the motion sensor that can respond to temperature and light changes does not have any finished native software in the Hue app on how they should function. Any software or behavior from these functions are undeveloped features within the Hue system but that are open for third parties to create their own software for.
We then can't support you with these sensors as we do not have any official information on how often these sensors gather information since it is not an official or marketed feature within the Hue system. It is possible that these features will be developed further in the future and that temperature- and light customization will be available in the Hue app.
Whether or not the rate at which the sensor gathers information can be customized would be up to a third party to create a behavior for. Possibly through the Hue Labs function."
The Hue Outdour motion sensor reports outside temp and Light level, that you can use for whatever reason.
Outside temp can be used to display the temperature on a dashboard tile and the sensor could be used to help determine if the outside lights should turn on or not depending on the level of ambiant light when you near sunset or sunrise instead of having fixed times.
You can use this data in many apps like in simple automation, rule machine, etc. to decide if you want to turn the light on when there is motion and if the light level is below a certain number.
Sorry if I didn't answer your question since i'm not really sure what it is.
But the response you got from Phillips is that the motion sensor itselft does not do anything with this info other than send it to the hub it is connected to. You have to determine if you want/need this info for your automations. Just like the fact that it sends you info if anybody trips the motion sensor.
Thank you for your reflections, and sorry for having been ambiguous in my question.
I am new to home automation and I have had the HE and Hue Outdoor sensor for a couple of weeks now. I bought the Hue Outdoor sensor mainly aiming to use the temperature and lightsensors. I want to use both the light sensor, much as you suggest, and the temperature sensor to feed data into a set of rules contorling the heating system in my house.
What I have found out during my two weeks witht he Outdoor sensor is, much to my disapointment, that there seems to be no regularity in when or how often the sensor sends temperature and or light information? Sometimes it sends temperature data a few times every hour, sometimes lightinformation every ten minutes or so, then there can be a pause for 10 hours and then a random reading again, and so it continues. I had hoped that there was some regularity to the frequency with which the sensor sends it's information. Without it, I can not see a use for the sensors?
From Phillips response to my question about with what frequesncy the sensor is supposed to send it's data, I interpreted that as to make use of the temperature and light sensor, I have to build a software to ask the sensor to send the information. Unfortunately I am not tech savvy enough to do so, so that is why I wondered if anyone else had built such an app. I.e. to control the reading intervals to be able to use the sensors as inputs to rules.
My guess is that the sensor sends reports at the configured intervals, which Hubitat does at pairing (or technically at "Configure," which you can also send manually) for you. This is fairly standard behavior for Zigbee devices, but Hubitat does not have a way to customize the exact reporting at the moment. It also sounds like Philips just silently included temperature in the sensor, perhaps for future use, without documenting how they are used (typical since their products are only intended to be used inside their system but are standard protocols and can be used elsewhere) or exposing these features anywhere inside the Hue app or API (perhaps reserved for future use, if any). Lux is used by the Hue system natively.
Back to the reporting, usually this is usually based on a combination of change and time. Do you notice any pattern there, like only so many tenths of a degree before a report is sent or a report at a minimum of every X hours? That is typical for many Zigbee sensors (and Z-Wave, though configuration options there are often more readily exposed).
I have been investigating for a few days collecting data and it appears the sensor do send temperature data and illumination data at fairly regular intervals, most of the time. During the day it appears to be sending illumination data every 7 minutes or so. I have mainly focused on the light data.
A problem that is still remaining is that some late evenings or early mornings, the sensor stops sending any light or temperature data for an extended period of time. One evening it stopped sending data at about 22 and did not start again until 9 the next morning. Another day it stopped at 06:30 in the morning and started again at 09:30 in the morning. I haven't figured out why these pauses occure or what causes the sensor to start again?
You mentioned a possibility to send a "configuration" command and manually trigger the sensor? I tried that by setting up an event that occurred at a certain time and sent a custom action “Configure” without any parameters, but nothing happened?
I had a look at the device setup / info page for the outdoor sensor and at the bottom of the page there is a scheduled job that I have not placed there, at least not willingly. logOff? Any ideas?
No, doing a "Configure" command will not cause the sensor to send new data, nor will it generally have any immediately visible effect. It just sends configuration to the device, which for Zigbee devices is usually what kinds of things it should report back to thr hub and how often. The hub uses what the driver author (on staff) considered sensible defaults, with no way to change this (at least not at the moment; and again, this is different from Z-Wave devices where these are usually exposed as Z-Wave parameters easily made available as preferences in the driver) unless you use or write a custom driver.
A "refresh" command might cause the sensor to send new data back. Not all battery devices respond to these (though Zigbee usually does for me). Even if this works, I wouldn't do it too often or you risk running the battery down faster. The sensor should send reports on its own. Are you noticing big changes between reports when it doesn't? Even if lots of time has passed, it could just be not sending something becsuse nothing changed enough. That is normal for some devices.
The "logsOff" job you see is something internal to the driver (as is any scheduled job on this page; you can't put anything there yourself unless you wrote the driver; apps or rules will not, as those scheduled jobs would be stored in that app, for example). Any time you turn on debug logging (including when it automatically gets turned on after pairing the device), it will turn off after 30 minutes. This is that timer.
Hi Magnus, I have noticed the same problem as you with lux reporting from Philips Hue Outdoor sensor. My plan is to use the lux value to turn on lighting when it starts to get dark outside, but since the unit does not report changes in the lux value according to the setting in Preferences (1lux change), it will hardly work. Have you come up with a solution to get the reporting started?
Hi Pierre,
The short answer is no. If I recall correctly Phillips Hue support answered that the light sensor is not supported, why there was not much to do.
With that said, I still use it for the purpose you describe. I am not sure what you mean by the sensor not sending values in Lux according to the settings? I have set up rules that will turn on lights when the outside illuminances is below 400 lux, combined with some other variables, such as times of day and or mode, and it works reasonably well. The sensor sends enough values for the rule to work good enough.
