Feature request for all inbuilt motion sensor drivers

Hi,

The virtual motion sensor has a great feature called
"auto inactive". Which I have added to my custom motion sensor drivers. This prevents any motion sensors being "stuck" being active when battery low or the inactive event not firing for some other reason.
I found that this greatly helps in preventing lights staying on forever.

However, I can only modify custom drivers and not alter any of the built in drivers.
Could I request this optional feature be added to all inbuilt motion sensor drivers too?

I think I'll follow this as I'll be interested in the reply. :wink:

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Properly functioning real motion sensors have their own (usually fixed) inactivity timeout. Any sensors that do have an adjustable setting have it included within the driver as a preference.
We are able to provide this for the virtual driver as it's a synthetic event.

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Several of my motion sensors, fibaro and smartthings will and do get stuck especially if the battery dies before it sends an inactive signal. Why can't we have a synthetic inactivity timeout event added as an option to prevent this scenario?

What if actual motion continues to trigger the sensor for a longer period of time than the auto timeout?

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It's an optional feature. I can set it to 1 hour for instance to prevent my lights staying on forever. Pretty sure nearly every sensor going has a re-trigger less than that. Before coming onto hubitat I had this setting for every one of my motion sensors on smartthings. It instantly removed me ever having issues with lights staying on forever. I had no issues at all with lights not coming on for any motion that was still alive.

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Totally agree and support this.
I very occasionally get motion sensors staying active and have rules to mitigate this. This additional feature can only add to the user experience.

So I am not sure what is better.

  • Having the lights stay on, and alerting you something is wrong with a rule or a sensor.
  • Having the lights never come on (after this auto reset makes it inactive) and once again you wonder what is wrong with a rule or sensor.

At least with the lights staying on, I can know fairly quickly the sensor didn't change to inactive or there is something wrong with a rule or whatever. With this proposed change, in a less active room, you may not know about the bad sensor for a long while.

There are currently some really good auto turn off apps available that could turn off a light if that is your main concern. And at least with the one app I use (csteele's Auto_Off) you can select lights in bulk, so it is very easy to turn off multiple or all lights after a period of time.

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@mike.maxwell
Could the (selectable) option be added to the motion device settings to have the motion sensor automatically go inactive if the power has not reported in after a set amount of time?
This would give motion zones much more reliability.
Instead of having an entire motion zone stay active because of one failed sensor.
Giving users the option to use the feature or not.

Not following, by power are you meaning the device battery reports?

Most, but certainly not all motion sensors produce battery reports. And to further this, some motion sensors sleep until active, so it's very difficult to make a determination between dead and just not very busy.

@mike.maxwell
Yes I meant battery reporting and yes not all motion sensors would have this option but the for ones that do it would be beneficial.