Cheap reliable motion sensors?


The iris V2 is on the left

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Wow that ecolink is big.

How does that sensor perform ? The battery life is the big thing for me.

The iris is super fast .. Ecolink is slow (intentionally) but insane battery life-3yrs.. Ecolink is used for alarm purposes (pet immune)... all my others are used for automation

Good to know. How has the battery life been with the iris? I have 14 installed around my house for the last 3-6 months...

Get a good year at least.. Obviously mileage will vary base on how often it detects/reports motion.. High traffic areas will not last as long as low traffic areas

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Word to the wise.. Buy your replacement batteries on Amazon ahead of time... Buying these batteries local is crazy expensive.. Amazon has them for cheap in packs..

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Thanks.

I actually have a ton of spare batteries.

I wanted to move to the new Lutron Caseta motion sensors coming out, but apparently they won’t report over telnet. Bah

Here you go Sir,

Not much difference

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Here's the Iris hard-wired... :grin:

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I actually appreciate the fact that they re-trigger with such a short reflexive period as it makes their use generally more flexible. I have a mixture of Domes and GE/Jascos, both Z-Wave+. The latter have a five minute reflexive period, which means that if I don't want a set of lights on for five minutes, and my rule turns them off after, say, a minute, I have to wait another four minutes before they can come on again. That wasn't coherent; I'm still on my first cup of coffee.

I have these in high traffic areas, and I have 4 kids, a dog, and a cat, so I mean high traffic. I just replaced the battery in the kitchen Iris after a year and a half. The battery was at 78%, but I didn’t want to chance it dying overnight and upsetting my wife.

The Hue motion sensor’s reactivation period is adjustable down to 10 seconds. Great for areas where you might be sitting still for a bit, but want immediate reactivation from movement. They’re not cheap but they’re reliable and fast.

Yeah I got tired of replacing batteries which is why I decided to try wiring them - if you have enough devices then it seems like a never ending cycle. Also worry about the reliability of the batteries I buy nowadays and always having to keep a large cache of various types around.

It's really easy to do.. and worth considering..

What did you use to step down the voltage? I would love to do this with my sensor in the garage refrigerator that eats a 2450 battery every other month. I could drill a hole in the back of the fridge to run the wire.

These:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074FBCKH5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I did this in my garage as well (not in the fridge - but that sounds cool) though I used an older Smart Things motion sensor.

One thing to be aware of is if you use connectors for the wires they might not fit in the compartment - just solder to the pins directly instead or get a similar regulator without the pins. Also the Iris case can easily be taken apart to get to the circuit board inside. I ended up trimming off most of the battery terminals. Also used charge only micro usb cables.

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So this might be a really crazy idea but if you could put one of those light socket with plugs in the fridge light you could power it internally. Not sure you could get the right size though, maybe with adapters.

I have Samsung buttons in the refrigerators because they report every temp change, but it makes them eat batteries. I’m thinking that I could put the voltage regulator in a box on the back and plug it in to the fridge outlet. Then I’ll run the cable through the back and seal the jole with silicone. I didn’t realize there were charge only cables :man_facepalming:t3:. I added them to the cart with the regulators. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Thanks!

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You might be able to tap in to the light power source somehow though.. the only reason I'm saying this is maintaining the integrity of the fridge - not that it would be compromised all that much by a little hole filled with silicone.

Yeah the charge only cables are nice, less wires. The ones I found had 4 wires - just used the black (-) and red (+) ones.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V6GZ5GM/

Kinda fancy but nice and long.

Interesting idea! Although, you'd have to figure out how to get constant power to the bulb socket... :thinking:

Perhaps the Ice Maker wiring could be tapped into to provide a constant source?

Gahh coffee has not kicked in (lame excuse I know).. totally forgot about the whole light goes out when door shut thing hahaha. I wonder if the switch is mechanical..

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