I installed my first motion sensor (sonoff) today, in the bathroom. I wanted to showoff the cool home automation skill of bathroom lights turning on automatically to my wife.
I configured it using Motion Lights app, and tested a few times. All good.
My wife came to the bathroom to test. Light was off but even when she was standing right in front of the sensor, and waving her arms...nothing happened That's Murphy's law at its best.
The light was off, when she entered, and I THINK it was atleast 4-5 mins since last test I did. What all might have caused the automation to not trigger?
Not really much information to go on here.
Positioning of sensor. Height, direction etc.
Rule formatting error.
What was in the logs/events?
Was the motion sensor actually triggering?
Just a starter for 10.
Did you manually turn off the light to 'set the stage' for the test?
Please share a screenshot of your Bathroom Motion Lighting app.
Here is one of mine that works like a champ. Notice how I added the "Downstairs Bathroom Lights" as a switch device to 'turn off lights' near the bottom...this has the added benefit of basically cancelling the "Delay off 5 minutes" timer in the vent someone turns off the light switch as they leave the bathroom. This means that the Motion Lighting automation will trigger again once the motion sensor detects motion, after its 30 sec reset time. 30 sec is what my Iris v2 Zigbee sensors have for a reset time.
Just to give another option, here is an RM5.0 rule for turing on a light with motion.
The light will turn on with motion and only turn off 30 seconds after the motion sensor turns inactive.
If motion is detected within that 30 seconds, the 'turn off' timer is cancelled and the light will remain on.
Just posting in case it is a motion rule problem and this is another option you may wish to try.
First off all - Marphy Law never fails.
Second - MS needs a "cool down" time. For some MS it is settable but usually default is 30-60 sec.
Third- Some MSs failed to report "inactive" state. I did not figure out why but I have 3 Jacko
Dimmer/MS combos. They are hardwired but all 3 occasionally failed to report "inactive" state.
Remedy is - a special RM rule to refresh then when they are "active".
Finally, Bathroom Lighting automation for some reason was a BIG challenge.
But now everything is working next to ideal and got 99% wife approval and satisfaction.
enable logging on the motion sensor and have your wife test it to see if it's actually triggering. if not, you may need to reposition the sensor to adjust for height difference
Sonoff motion sensors have a 2.5 minute time out, they can't be retriggered before that period is up, which may be what tripped you up.
I would also note that making the bathroom the first location with motion activated lighting is a mistake, because people spend a lot of time either sitting very still, or 'hiding' from the motion sensor inside the shower. It is the worst place to have the lights turn out on you, and the place where it's most likely to happen.
If you're going to use motion lighting there, make sure the shutoff period is long. In general, that's a good practice in any location that people don't just pass through. Other than in hallways, none of my motion sensors time out in less than 10 minutes, and some take quite a bit longer. I've also got multiple motion sensors in any room where people spend extended periods of time.
Ditto. The fraction of a penny you save by turning off at 1 minute or 5 minutes vs 15 or 30 is absolutely meaningless versus the annoyance factor when they turn off when they aren't supposed to.
I learned that lesson the hard way many years ago in my infancy of home automation.
AKA - leaving the light on an extra 10-20 minutes is a lot cheaper than the electrician bill when the wife gets pissed off enough to pay an electrician to put in standard switches when you are out of town on a business trip after the light in the bathroom turned off one too many times while she was getting ready. Ask me how I know that...
(I of course put smart switches back in as soon as I came home, but her point was made and the timers greatly extended)
My typical rules using Sonoff motion sensors:
Dim if there are 3 minutes with no motion
Off if there are 5 minutes with no motion
One of my first bosses told me, do not test if it works, but test the boundaries where it no longer works. Timeout claims many victims in home automation. The alternative is to spend 4x as much on a Hue motion sensor or some other highly tunable sensor.
I swear women generate some sort of EMF. Causes printers not to print, sensors not to trigger, devices to fail in the strangest ways possible. My wife laughs all the time when something won't work for her, she shows it to me, and it works just fine. "EMF!"
Happened to me tonight. I noticed the kitchen light cycling on/off. I asked my wife what happened. She said she "turned on the switch wrong." It's a zen34 remote. I walked up, pressed the switch, light turned on just fine, like it always does for me. This kind of thing happens all the time. I try to build in safeguards but I can only do so much. Still not sure how she turned on the switch wrong. LOL
It gets better... The primary reason I installed motion activated light was for my 4 yr old kid. she does not reach light switch completely yet, hence I thought this can be another win for me. Kid walks in, light turns magically on... Dad becomes the hero.
Reality - kid came, and is now scared of the motion sensor because it blinks in "scary" red color and then the light turns on suddenly taking her by surprise. She now avoids using that bathroom in which I installed the automation :: Hair pulling frustrated emoticon here ::
I can appreciate the sensitivity to sudden light changes. Unless it is in a utility area (garage, laundry), I am rather partial to a soft ramp-up. Dimmers with both "Transition Time" and "Start Level Change Rate" allow me to tune the overall household approval.
As a middle-aged man, I am not longer scared of the red blink of a motion sensor, but I am a bit leery of it.
I have 2 motion sensors and a door contact and 5 mins timeout just for WAF.
Mounted one in the ceiling, one just a few inches from the floor. Been working great for years now. Well until one of the sensor run out of battery.
I have two motion sensors in the bathroom. One points at the door and sink and one is actually IN the shower. If you don't go into the shower the overhead light and fan don't come on, but once they do, they stay on for 40 min.
My toilet is actually in a separate room, so sitting still is not a problem. (Apparently the separate room was a thing in the Harrison administration.)
The complaint I get from visitors is "why is there a camera in the shower?"
That's Murphy's law at its best.
