Cat triggering motion / please help

I have been using 3 eotec By Aeon Labs Gen5 Z-wave Plus 6-in-1 Multisensor 6 ZW100-A for motion sensing with HSM successfully for 2 years but now I have a cat that trips the motion sensors everyday. 1. I pointed them upwards not to look at floor as much and 2. I went very very high sensitivity to medium and still getting tripped... any ideas?

Get rid of the cat.
:scream_cat:

Are you trying to sense an area, or would a "trip beam" sensor work in this spot? You can narrow the beam of the existing sensors in various ways so you have to basically walk through the beam.

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Cats are jerks. They find a way to cause problems

my source: I have two cats.

Seriously though all you can really do is aim it differently, lower the sensitivity, or block the eye in areas where the cat is setting it of.

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Thank God I'm allergic to :cat2:

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The Ecolink sensors with pet immunity work well. Some people use tape or other methods to limit the sensor’s view.

If you're not set on using that particular sensor, you might be able to aim one with a smaller lens better or use the "restrict the lens with heat shrink" trick that some people use (basically, put heat shrink tubing around the lens, leaving enough to stick straight out from the lens and restrict its field--say, particularly in the downward direction where a cat might be walking but where a human would likely be tall enough to still set it off). I suppose you could try that with the Aeotec and very large tubing, but I mentioned another sensor because I'm thinking of ones like the Iris v2 sensor where the lens diameter is a better match to common sizes of this product. Perhaps you could find a similarly creative solution. :slight_smile:

"They" (not many manufacturers, but you can find one or two Zigbee or Z-Wave ones that I can't remember off the top of my head) also make "curtain sensors," which are like motion sensors with a very restricted field of vision that should literally detect only you walking right by. If you need your solution to look pretty, this might be a better option, but you're limited in device selection. Some manufacturers--not Aeon--also claim to have "pet immunity" settings like someone mentioned above. I've never used the Ecolink that I know has this feature, but I've used the similar Monoprice and found its response time unbearably slow. Your experience and preferences may vary, and I'm sure the Ecolink has better firmware (faster, I don't know).

Beyond that, perhaps you could consider other ideas, like adding a second sensor and using something like Zone Motion Controllers to require both to be active before you'll consider motion in that zone to be "active," then use that ZMC device in your automations instead of the original sensor. If speed is your goal, this may not be ideal. Or if you only care about this at night/sleep time, for example, consider restricting the lighting automation by mode (and using a mode for this time).

It's kinda overkill but you could try this solution by setting up a camera as well as your motion sensor and mask out for Pet detection using a Rule Machine rule. I don't have pets so I don't know how good tinyCam's AI is at detecting a Pet. It's certainly fairly good at detecting Person and Vehicle based on my experience so far. You do need an always on phone/tablet/PC etc for this solution in order to run tinyCam. The other thing it gives you (if you don't have natively on the camera you would use) is masking so you can set up the area in which motion detection activates. This way you can also select which area to make the detection.

Oh, another idea.... If they are not your cats and you want them off your lawn anyway, you can use a few battery powered sonic sounders. We have these on one property and no more cats. They hate the sound.

Thanks for all the ideas... i'm going to try a few of them that do not require hardware replacements at first.

You are going about this the wrong way. There's a pill that you can give the cat and it will never trip the motion sensor again. I forget the name, but any pills given in sufficient quantities will have the same effect.

signal15 - perhaps that was supposed to be funny but it was anything but. Please post any animal cruelty or torture ideas elsewhere

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Lighten up, I happen to like cats. Although dogs are vastly superior and not out to get us.

This K9-85 has a proven track record of addressing this very problem in a proprietary model. Been a challenge addressed in the Security System industry for awhile now. Now in a non-proprietary ZigBee device! You can tell by the installation "tuning" instructions this isn't your average ZigBee motion sensor. Bought mine on Ebay.

This is the trisensor but the concept is the same. Photographers call this a "snoot." Others call it a "toilet paper roll." I suggest removing excess paper and painting if used in a public area. It can also probably be shortened significantly.

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