I'm interested in motion active events, and I'm looking to have a maximum of two motion sensors per room. If there are some sensors out there that are pre-configured to little or no delay, a heads-up would be appreciated.
Also, I am fully aware of the resident's rights and each POA or capable resident has accepted the motion detector system at night, so there aren't any legal issues to work with. I am also replacing an old system where most of the old sensors are dying out, and looking to modernize a bit. Appreciate the concerns, however.
For motion active, most devices have sensitivity adjustment and can sometimes detect movement slightly faster with higher sensitivity. The trade-off is higher rate of false positives (air currents are one common cause of false positives with PIR sensors).
For detecting motion inactive, most devices have some minimum time (often also configurable) to avoid excessive events, which is usually undesirable for both battery life and the user experience..
Since the most common use case is motion lighting, the default settings are usually set to give the best experience for this use case: moderate sensitivity to balance detection with avoiding false positives, and a reasonable minimum active time (often 1-3 minutes) so lights don't turn on and off as you move around the room.
So how could I access those settings? I was suggested to look at the driver, but I was unable to find how to access and change it. Dumb instructions would be much appreciated
How rapidly do these events have to be in succession. To @tony.fleisher's point, the motion sensors I use have a 90 second motion active time out, which exactly in the middle of his 1-3 minutes.
There is a hardware hack for Aqara motion sensors (which are not Hubitat compatible) that permit motion active events to be sent every 5 seconds.
I suspect you will need a motion sensor that can be hardware configured to send these events so rapidly, because the sensors I know of will not do that in their default hardware configuration.
You would have to write your own driver because the source for built-in drivers isn't available. But even if they were available (or if you write a driver), you are still limited to the rate that the motion sensor's hardware sends a motion active event.
Apologies for my inactivity. I suppose I'll just be looking into either finding or writing a new driver if possible, or just finding another sensor that better suits the job. Many thanks for all the clarification and help everyone has shown to me throughout this wild journey.
Best regards to all.
As has been stated already, sensativity and reaction time are the most important aspects, not the sensor reset time.
For reliability and the fastest reacting sensor (minimum 1 min reset time, but that's NOT what you should prioritize) is the Lutron occupancy sensor. There are Caséta and RA2 versions. They need to trigger a Lutron device and you also need a Lutron Smart Bridge Pro for a Caséta Occupancy Sensor, or an RA2 Main Repeater for an RA2 occupancy sensor. If you want to use that reaction to trigger something else, you can. You simply monitor the activation of the Lutron device.
Yes, the Xiaomi sensor can be hacked to reset faster, but that doesn't make it more sensitive or less prone to dropping off the network. It's not the right sensor for monitoring occupancy for what sounds to be a safety concern.
