I bought a Ring motion sensor and added to my Hubitat C-8 Pro using SmarStart. Wrote a rule in Rule Machine and placed it on my front porch to test. I found it was activating about every two minutes do to the wind or whatever. While I was researching this I heard a "crack" outside and fond the Ring had fallen onto my concrete porch. It would no longer work after that, i.e., no power lights even after resetting. Not to worry! I had a second Ring sensor which I wanted to setup in the Ring app so I could adjust the sensitivity. To make a long story short the Ring app said to set it up in Alexa, and Alexa said to set it up in the Ring app. Subsequently I called Ring support and found that you need a base station to setup the device in the Ring app!
Can anyone recommend a compatible motion sensor that does not require cloud connectivity or a base station? Or better yet, could control sensitivity from the Hubitat if possible.
Update: I just discovered that I can control sensitivity using Hubitat. Yippee!
PIR based sensors are always going to have issues with wind. In my case I was able to put them on the fence pointing back at the house. With the Third Reality sensors I've been able to orient them so that the stray cats don't trigger them most of the time. I still get a few false triggers at night.
I ended up with a very expensive motion setup. I'm using Unifi camera smart detections. Since they can tell the difference between general motion, people, animals, and vehicles it works really well. On one camera I use vehicle and person. On another it is just person.
With this setup I was getting one false alert a week. I reported the false alert and for the past couple of weeks I have had no false alerts. I don't know if there was some sort of update, or the cameras learned, I've just had better luck. My last false trigger was June 13th.
If I didn't already have the cameras this would have been way too expensive. Otherwise this is the best motion sensor setup I have had in the past ten years.
This is what the front door trigger looks like. It sets a virtual switch that controls my exterior lights.
No, they are PIR. Those are the ones I have pointing at the house so the wind doesn't trigger them. If you look at the docs you can see that the angle of detection is different on the top and the bottom. I mounted them about five feet off the ground and upside down. That greatly reduced the number of times the stray cats were triggering them.
Overall they work well but will be triggered by the same things that trigger any PIR sensor. I don't know if they are outdoor rated but they have worked without issue. Then again we only get 4.5" of rain a year. I am running them off of rechargeable batteries. The batteries need to be replaced about once a year.
Since I already had a Unifi Protect install it was trivial to use the new integration in HE. This has been the only reliable motion trigger I have found for outdoors.
I have also used the Ecolink Z-wave sensors. They worked well with the cats, but they would sometimes fall off my mesh. They have a jumper that allows you to set the sensitivity. Because of the way I have them setup I don't know how well they work vs the wind/plants.
Thanks for the info. I have two Ring motion sensors one on the front porch and one on the back patio. This is the second night I've noticed that after it cools down, no more false alarms. Essentially, I don't care about the false alarms during the day, since the actions do not occur until between sunset and sunrise. I'm curious how this will all work in the winter!
My PIR sensors were the same way. The rules only triggered at night. One funny thing I noticed with them is that they would trigger on a hot night if it started to rain. Everything cooled down quick enough to trigger them.
I also have contact sensors on my gates so I know if anybody opens them any time of day or night. Now with the Protect smart detections I can also rely on 24 hour motion detection. I haven't decided how I will use it outside of turning on the exterior lighting.
