Opinion: Best USB powered motion sensor

Hi all,

I have a really active hallway and my Fibaro motion sensor just eats up batteries there. I'd like to put a usb powered motion sensor there but it seems like the ones I find have price ranges from $30 to $50 dollars.

whats your favorite USB powered motion sensor that works with HE?

I am not a big fan of battery powered devices either slowly trying to move away from them.
I really like using GE 26931 motion switches and just disable the auto on/off feature when I install them. You can still use the motion sensor reading for rules/triggers.
Not usb powered but work great for rooms.
I also have a usb powered Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Multi-Sensor 6, Gen5 (ZW100-A) which works well but I prefer the GE switches.

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I haven't personally used one yet (I have a couple arriving Tuesday) but my experience with the other products has been excellent. HE has built-in support too!

https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/products/zooz-z-wave-plus-motion-sensor-zse18-with-magnetic-base-battery-or-usb-power

Aeon's MulitSenor has the usual "on the wall/ceiling" mount, using double sided tape. They also have a Recessor too.

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I would suggest just trying a different motion sensor. Are you opposed to Zigbee sensors? The Centralite seem to be very good on battery. Mine is near the bathroom (we have only one bathroom) and it's battery is at 66%. I bought it used in January of this year.

Xiaomi need a compatible repeater if you're in a large home and the sensor will be far from the hub, but they seem to be very good on battery life so far.

[Edit] If you're adventurous, you can make an adapter similar to this one. You'll want to try to find a 3.0v 2A regulated power adapter. Then you just take a piece of dowel the diameter of a CR123 and cut it to length. Attache the positive adapter wire on one end with a small pan head wood screw and the negative wire on the opposite side with a small washer equal to the dowel diameter and a flat head screw. I've made similar adapters many times before. They work great and there's often a little extra space for the wire to exit. If not, I either leave the battery cover off and just put a piece of tape over it to hold the adapter in, or I drill a small hold in the battery cover and route the power adapter wire through the hole before assembling the adapter.

If you want to get really fancy, you can add a matching female plug to the battery adapter, That way you can easily unplug the motion sensor if you need to reset/re-pair, without the need to de-route the power cable. These matching female plugs are pretty easy to find either alone or with the matching male plug. AV camera installers often need them. I purchased a bunch off Amazon for in-wall routing of power cables for Linksys Velop APs, where the included power cable was too short for the required mount height, plus the routing.

[Edit 2] Almost forgot the obvious. Rechargeable CR123s. I have and recommend Tenergy brand for reliability and length of use.

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All currently available USB-power-able motion sensors I'm aware of are Z-Wave. This protocol with motion sensors tends to be a bit slower than ZigBee, which I happened to find too annoying for motion-based lighting (it's not extreme--just tens to sometimes hundreds of milliseconds, but definitely enough to be noticeable and not usable for my desire of touchless (minimal need for switches), automated lights. I did a lot of tests: in about 15 trials, HomeSeer MS-100+ sensors (on battery but able to be USB powered) were often nearly a full second (sometimes more) slower than Iris, which were consistently the fastest to respond. I didn't have an Aeon Multi at the time (also able to be USB powered) have also observed that it is slower than Iris. The Zooz ZSE18 mentioned above appears to be the same as the HomeSeer HS-MS100+, by the way, so I'd expect them to perform similarly unless they have radically different firmware.

The Z-Wave sensors above may be faster if paired when USB powered--I have not compared that configuration (my understanding is that with Z-Wave, it does matter how they are paired, and if you intend to use them powered, you should pair them when powered). Dome (DMMS1) tended to be in between these extremes but usually closer to HomeSeer, but you can't USB-power them.

If you want my opinion on what's the best USB-powered motion sensor, I'd say it's the original (Kickstarter-era) ST motion sensor. :slight_smile: Unfortunately, they are obviously long discontinued--but if you can find a used one on eBay or somewhere, they're fantastic (and work with Hubitat). That being said, I've had good luck with most battery-powered motion sensors, even in busy areas--Iris tends to last a while, for example, as does Xiaomi (quite fast on Hubitat compared to ST, BTW, owing to no cloud processing--but even on ST, they still tended to be faster than Z-Wave!).

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I've been using several usb-powered Aeotec MultiSensor 6's with the custom driver for my basement. Works well if you play around with the settings. I'm a big fan of not having to change batteries everywhere.

Under ST for me at least Z-Wave was more reliable. There may be more of a lag as compared to the ST Motion sensors but I don't really notice a difference maybe thanks in part to the local processing of HE. For my use case they seem to work fine.

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