So I'm sitting here at my laptop, typing away, petting a cat, and turning my head glancing up at the Fibaro motion sensor across the room; maybe 15 feet from my head? And...most of the time while I'm sitting here in the room, not frozen stiff, my test light shows blue, which is what it shows when the motion sensor is inactive. So...if I were using it, say, to control the lights in this room, they'd come on when I came in, and probably drop out on me every few minutes. I'd think if I were just watching TV I'd be even less active. I can reliably make it notice me by moving my hand about 18 inches; I see the blink on the device, and I see my test light change color (two trivial rule machine rules), so I'm reasonably confident my test conditions are valid.
I guess -- try upping the sensitivity the one step possible? And maybe increase the motion retrigger time? Or should that be decrease? What is the motion retrigger time? Nope, increasing the sensitivity hasn't helped, and doubling the retrigger hasn't helped.
Are people controlling the light directly with the motion sensor, like this? Or using additional rules to give it long timeouts or something?
Not really sure if the issue is the activity level, or the range. Range is well inside the speced limit though. Oh, the sensitivity is on the default setting, which is one from the most sensitive as I read it.
I bought one of these to try out a while back (it reports illuminance, which few others besides Hue and the possibly-discontinued Dome and out-of-stock Inovelli do, ignoring the outdoor Zooz and the questionable 4-in-1 ... lux values were something I was hoping to use).
Anyway, I'm noticing the same thing. Mine is at the far end of my dining room, and it doesn't seem to register motion until I've practically walked right up to it, with me already having basically walked across the room to it. I haven't figured out of time or distance was the issue, but I suspected time. (In its defense, my house is old and the dining room isn't that big, but this is a far cry from my preferred sensors' response times.) I left my sensitivity at the default of 2, which also appears to be almost the most sensitive setting (like you, my interpretation is that it goes 1-20, with 1 being the most sensitive; I haven't tried a value of 1). This isn't that different from a lot of other Z-Wave sensors I've used; they seem to be categorically slower at registering motion that just about any Zigbee sensor I've used. Whether this is due to the protocol itself (maybe it takes longer to "wake up") or the history of sensors and how sensitive they are to motion (I understand some Z-Wave sensors were originally designed more with security in mind, where false positives are worse than slow detection that those of us looking more for motion lighting prefer), though I've seen people suggest it's the latter.
So, no, your behavior doesn't seem that odd to me for this sensor, nor does it seem that odd for a lot of Z-Wave motion sensors. If you're looking for motion lighting, most people around here will recommend Zigbee sensors due to their fast response times. Iris v2 were my (and many others') favorites but are long discontinued; the also-discontinued Iris v3 or anything by Centralite (also probably hard to find now) are good seconds. The SmartThings v5/2018 sensor used to be my recommendation for currently available sensors, but with their hardware business--if not the entire platform itself--in a state of flux, I'm not sure if they're available, either. Sonoff aren't bad but won't win any design awards, though their price might make up for it. Lutron are otherwise my preferred sensors, but require "full" RA2 (or higher) to integrate into Hubitat, so probably not a cheap entry point...
I'm sure others may have other recommendations. Otherwise, the general advice seems to be that most Zigbee sensors would work better for applications where speed is key. (The tradeoff is that few have configurable settings, like sensitivity, so it's not all a loss with Z-Wave--just for this particular use in many cases.)
Well, I'm at least sure my issue is with the sensor responding at all, rather than with how quickly it might respond. I can see it sitting there, and I can see the LED eye flash when it reports. And I can sit still and watch it not report at all, and watch it not report at all when I make various small movements. And then see it report quite promptly when I make a big movement .
I do very much approve of the range of things this sensor can sense! Though I have no urgent plans for any of the others, I may end up using them recreationally, or finding something I value that needs them. I resent being stuck with batteries, but on the other hand being that wide-open with placement is certainly of value, and if it's really a yearly replacement that's not too nasty. Anyway all the sensors seem to be battery-driven, so that's something I just have to live with.
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