What I need is a way to detect false positives on my beam sensor. I have a motion ECOLINK PIR motion sensor mounted near the beam. In my testing the motion triggers a couple seconds before the beam when I walk up to the carport and break the beam. The PIR sensor only detects people, that has been verified, unless of course the bird or cat (that happened) is very close!
I am thinking of setting a global variable to true if motion is detected and then if the beam is broke, check for that var == true before sounding the alarm. We have been getting lizards and maybe frogs breaking the beam in the middle of the night, several times now. We don't want to be woken up for a lizard!
I used to use a microwave detector on my alarm system. It would trigger on anything that approached it, but nothing that crossed it's path from left to right or right to left. It was surplus traffic signal detection equipment. It worked well and I had no trouble with false calls. In my shop I have two PIRs mounted next to each other and skewed just slightly. I used to get false calls when a bug would decide to crawl around on one of the sensors. The two detectors with outputs wired in series solved the problem. Been working 100% for over 10 years.
I haven't played with it but Hubitat has a built-in app called Motion Zones which can block false calls if programmed correctly and with sensors properly placed. Check that out in your spare time.
And going way, way back, my first alarm system. Can't recall the brand name but it was a radar system. You mounted as few as one short antenna centrally in your home, perhaps in the attic, When operating the transmitter developed a radar pattern like an umbrella that encompassed your entire home. ANY movement in that umbrella sounded an alarm. Not good if you have pets or drapes that blow in the wind. There were sensitivity controls and you could make the umbrella larger or smaller. I still have the darn thing out in my shop.
Is it an active beam pair? I.e a transmitter one end and a receiver the other end? I have a set across my garden at waist height and never get false alarms, they just work. Mine are hardwired and connected to a nodemcu.
If that's what you have, Maybe you could raise them up a bit to eliminate the false alarms from wildlife?
It has a transmitter/receiver on one side and a reflector. I have power easily to one side on;ly. ANYTHING crawling over the unit sets it off. Here in Florida we have lots of crawly things!
I wire a dry contact sensor to that to get it to talk to Hubitat
I went with a predicate (night mode and motion hub var/switch). I set up the hub variable to be a bool based switch because the motion will always trigger first on any large heat source, car or human. When it does it turns that switch ON. If the beam gets tripped AND that switch is ON AND it is mode night (the only time audible alarms go off) BOOM.
I just have Alexa announce during DAY, MORNING and EVENING. I have it spam my phone if I set it to AWAY.
I tried 2 motion sensors but I live within 60 feet or so of a road and every time a big truck goes by it will trigger as it is a large heat source. So, I went with a beam.
