How many motion sensors do you have?

How many motion sensors are you using in your home?

I'm sitting at 16, and I'm feeling like this is excessive. :slight_smile:

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Probably depends on how big your place is... I'm in a small apartment and have six, one for each of the 5 rooms and 1 for the hall. I'm probably standard - one per room.

Where I just went a little crazy was with the Iris V1 contact sensors, as they were about 5 bucks each on ebay if you bought in bulk. Now all 8 of my windows have contact sensors, the 2 entrance doors, and the 4 closets. I'm not even sure what they are all for yet... right now I'm making rules that alert me if windows are open and the heat is on. Or if windows are open and the outside humidity is greater than 90% (I'm hoping that will be a reliable indicator of rain). So unnecessary, but gotta use the devices somehow!

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Motion sensors:
5 Bosch
2 Iris V1
3 Iris V1 not yet in use
I am planning placement of the 3 not in use to set up zones for false positive prevention. I am using the two already installed for that purpose, but the three additional ones will let me make more targeted zones.

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Motions sensors only 6, but 13 contact sensors with another 8 (because of the cheap V1 Iris) to add that gets me "started" on the windows

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22 + 4 in boxes ready to be deployed.

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20 here, all lights are motion activated

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Iā€™m at 11 motion sensors and 3 contact sensor.

My count was wrong.

I want one outside but Iā€™m worried about false positives. I want to trigger my sprinklers when animals are outside.

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38 currently...
Possibly more indicitave would be sf/motion sensor
I'm slightly less than 100 here...

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I have one or two per room (and a few in the basement), plus a couple outside and a few extras I've never deployed, which I think makes the total around 20. I swear I could still use more. :slight_smile:

Most of mine are used for lighting automations. My next project (besides contemplating getting rid of everything Xiaomi) might be two per room to minimize false security alerts. I'm already using two in some rooms with the second as a "keep lights on" sensor (rather than a "turn on" sensor).

What are you using outside? Do you get false positives ?

I'm not using anything special outside. If I had to do it now, I'd probably try the Hue or Dome outdoor sensors (those are the new ones I'm thinking of, right? there used to be pretty much none). But I'm using a Dome DMMS-1 and the Monoprice 15271 (which I hated so much it got relegated to outside use, and if it broke then...I wouldn't care). I used to use a Xiaomi under the assumption it was so cheap that if the experiment failed I wouldn't care; it was successful, so I went with sensors I had to worry less about. Both are well protected, especially from above, and I wouldn't trust either if they weren't.

As for false positives, I'm sure they get a lot during the day. (I don't check their history regularly anymore but I know my Xiaomi did when I had it automated on Home Assistant where this was a bit easier to see.) I mostly use them for lighting automations at night, where I have yet to notice that happening.

(EDIT: did I say I could always use more? I found a lot of 10 Iris v2 sensors for sale on eBay, one of many such listings I've seen recently...so I couldn't resist.)

I have one of my Aeon Multisenor 6 outdoors, under an eve, great battery life, facing my front door from 20 ft away. I use it only to tell me if someone visits when away. Pretty rare, because there's always questions to answer here. :smiley:

I have 14 actual motion sensors (and 5 on the way), plus 14 cameras that act as motion sensors (emulated as virtual motion sensors in HE). I also have 15 contact sensors.

Of all you in here that use them in bedrooms, how to you setup your rules at night (bedtime)?

I was wanting to add them to bedrooms to control lighting when walking into a room, but did not know about how to go about bed time. Do you just create a rule restriction to stop monitoring motion between certain hours?

You could do it with a per-room virtual switch but since I basically live alone, I used modes to do this. I have four modes: Day, Evening, Night, and Morning. During Evening and Morning modes, most lights turn on automatically with motion. The exception is my bedroom, where Morning doesn't do anything unless I turn them on myself. Night mode restricts most lighting automations, bedroom included (but does make the hall and bath glow a dim warm light with motion for non-blinding way to see my way at night).

Good question. I wish the answer I'm about to give was as good! This is the best solution I've found so far.

I have restriction switches on all my room's motion light rules. It is the manual lights switch so named because you turn the lights from auto to manual with it. I also have a switch for nighttime that I can all from my google home. When nighttime is on, it turns off the (master) bedroom lights and also stops the automation by motion.

I found that wasn't good enough. Plus it doesn't work if anyone is in the other bedroom. They might not be ready for bed the same time as you. So I bought a smart things button for each bedroom and put it on the headboard. Pressing it once toggles the current state of the light and switches the lights to manual.

So it isn't night, but I'm lying in bed watching tv and the lights go off. I press it once and it turns the lights back on and stops them from changing again. Or same the other way -I'm trying to take a nap during the day and they keep coming on every time I move around, I press it once and it turns them off and stops them from changing again. Holding the button down for a couple seconds puts the lights back to auto (or you could use double press).

Another thing I recently did, I put my TVs on outlets that measure power. So if the TV is drawing greater than X of power (i.e. is on and not in standby), keep the lights in their current state.

Do you do that through the Motion Lighting app or do you have a RM rule setup to disable the motion with the TV drawing power?

My living room lights are motion activated as well (as are all of mine), but I came up with a slightly different workaround: I put a pressure mat under the couch cushion, hooked the leads from it up to a contact sensor with external contacts, and am using a custom driver that treats it as a motion sensor that is "active" when the contact is closed. (Optional as many apps support contact sensors, but mine don't.) Then, it's usable as a "keep on" motion sensor in my lighting automations--and the lights won't turn off if anyone is sitting still watching TV. :slight_smile:

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I do all my lighting through rule machine. The motion lighting is great too, just more options in rule machine.

When the TV is drawing power, it turns on that manual switch previously discussed (the restriction switch). When the TV goes off, it turns the manual switch back off. There are other ways to do it, but at least with this way I know how to override it - just ask google to change the lights back to auto (turn off the manual switch).

It doesn't always work out - but I do my best to try to set up rules so that I never have to ask google to do anything. Nor use that lighting button.

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