Is it possible to turn off a motion sensor completely in HE?

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1

Hi all,

I'm wondering if it's possible to actually "turn off" an SmartThings motion sensor (v3, I believe) using HE. To clarify, I have a set of rules set up to have motion activations turn on lights, but only after a certain time of night. It has occurred to me recently that the motion sensor is on and triggering all throughout the day, which has a noticeable impact on battery. I'm wondering if there is a way to essentially stop the motion sensor from even registering motion during a time window and then re-enable motion sensing during a different window, rather than just controlling the actions using RM.

If that's not clear, lmk and I'll try to explain.

2

I think the battery draw from the motion part of the sensor is negligible compared to the radio power usage.

If you turn off the sensor, you would want to turn off the radio. If you turn off the radio, how would you reenable it?

So I don't think you will find savings even IF this were possible. And it is not, far as I am aware.

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3

No. You could pull the battery at night and put it back in the morning. But as @neonturbo points out, the savings would be negligible.

4

@aaiyar and @neonturbo That's helpful clarification re the power usage. And, if it's the radio that's really taking up the power (which makes sense as I think about it), then the dilemma that @neonturbo states is a critical blocker.

I'll just live with it and order a whole stock of batteries. :slight_smile:

5

If it's eating them that fast maybe replace it with a different sensor?

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6

If the sensor is in a place you can plug it in, you can mod it to be a plug in. I've done this with 2 smarthing sensors and 4 or so Iris ones. I did this due to high traffic and use as I was going through batteries pretty quickly.

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