Presence sensor suggestion for late 2024

I haven't kept up on smart devices lately but I would like to add a presence sensor, preferably Zigbee to my c7. Are their any devices out there yet that work with Habitat reliably? I am entirely burnt out on smart home stuff so I would prefer to not have to jump through hoops to make it work.

Samsung no longer produces its Zigbee Arrival Sensors ($30); they are replaced by Samsung mobile phones ($300++) that act as presence sensors...

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And probably collect a few other data points along the way.... :wink:

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It’s a bit of a shame there is nothing similar, I have one for me and another and it’s an absolute dream. Don’t know what I will do when they break, already used my spare one :sob:

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There are BT tags that can be used with the AB BLE Gateway :

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What brand phone do you use? My family uses iPhones and we are using HomeKit for presence and it’s been very reliable. I also have WiFi presence setup for a different person too.

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Presence, as in:

  1. A specific person is at (or proximate to) home?
  2. A specific thing is at (or proximate to) home?
  3. Any person is in a certain portion of the home?

Just making sure that efforts are pointed in a relevant direction.

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Would like Hubitat to know what room a person is in. I remember seeing videos about the Aqara sensor being able to tell distance and capable of knowing when you go past a certain point. In my house I think a sensor like that could detect if I'm in the backdoor hallway, kitchen, dining room, or living room. This seems ideal if it actually works.

Aqara FP2 can not identify a particular person, it reports no-named objects that are moving in the detection area. ā€˜Moving’ also means breathing, when the FP2 sensor is mounted on the ceiling and the human is under the sensor….not very practical in all use cases.

The AB BLE gateway reports the approximately distance to each BLE tag (if carried all the time by each person). But I don’t have a practical experience how reliable the distance reporting is (it is based on the tag BT signal strength).

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I started with BLE Beacons. They worked wery well but unfortunately they have zero security. Since my goal was not only presence detection but also automatic door unlock and open I replace them with Selly BLE Buttons. This have very high security but unfortunately require to push a button. This happens to be not a big deal because anyway I have to hold an rfid tag for entering into the building and using elevators.

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That’s not the Hubitat definition of presence, FWIW.

These two are:

It sounds like you’re looking for a ā€œmotionā€ sensor that can also detect when a person is in a room but staying still, which traditional PIR motion sensors can’t handle.

You probably want a mmWave sensor, many of which use the term ā€œpresence sensorā€ in their marketing, which would explain the confusion.

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DIY ESPesense project does exactly this. But each person needs to hold/wear BLE Beacon device. Some of them are very small.

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Sounds like mmwave is what I am looking for, sorry for the confusion. Any suggestions for a Zigbee one that works well. I only see Sonoff and a dozen different Tuya ones.

This Linptech one is popular (also sold under Moes name) - it's not perfect (it's a Tuya under the hood, afterall), but it's pretty solid -- quite a few of us out here are using it.

It even has a native driver (as well as a couple community driver options).

Linptech Human Presence Sensor ES1,Smart Motion Sensor with 24G mmWave Radar,Occupancy Sensor Requires Tuya Zigbee Hub for Home Security and Automation,Compatible with Alexa,Smart Life,Z2MQTT,ZHA: Amazon.com: Tools & Home Improvement

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You can also look at the
[MATTER] Meross MS600 - PIR and Millimeter Wave Radar [NEW]

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I have a number of Inovelli zigbee light switches with built-in mmWave on preorder. They are attractive to me because they are local, they are low profile in the home, and they are mains wired. They are currently indicated as arriving November/December timeframe. Not sure if installing a light switch would be too much of a hoop for you to jump through?

Inovelli is a premium quality smart light switch company that has for quite some time produced light switches that reliably work well with Hubitat (I have many non-mmWave Inovelli switches myself).

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As a fellow backer of the Inovelli campaign, I would strongly advise against this device (for now). They have yet to demonstrate that the mmWave sensor yields any useful output, which is just bizarre since it was the main point of the project over 2 years ago.

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I could see this potentially being a dealbreaker for many people.

It could be even more problematic than PIR sensors built into the light switch, since mmWave sensors are sooo sensitive, meaning exact placement in a room can make a huge difference in terms of how useful they are.

Is the mmWave sensor tunable? Does it have zones that can be blocked off?

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I think what @Hatallica is trying to advise here is that you should look into whether this sensor will provide the features you need, which of course is wise advice no matter what product you look into. The "for now" comment is just that the product is still under development (hopefully on the last leg) and it may be worthwhile to wait until further announcements are made about the final product's feature set before ordering.

You can decide for yourself by staying tuned to the inovelli forum here.

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Also a backer (although just one switch for me), and I definitely share Hatallica's concerns.

Inovelli is stretched way too thin right now with Project Europa and a White series rollout that's not going super great (admittedly much that's due to Matter/Thread stuff out of their control, but they still dove headlong right in the middle of that whole mess so the current situation isn't surprising).

I'm just hoping their mmW switch can do plain basic detection OK -- I don't need or want any bells-&-whistles like zones etc.

Even if it does ship by EOY, I don't expect to actually install the switch until at least late spring or summer... It'll take a while to bake out the firmware kinks, and I'm not convinced supporting this switch will be a high priority for Inovelli, given their focus on Europa and White as more lucrative markets.

But aside from all that, Mark's point above about placement is the most legit concern with these... In my house, there's just one switch location where a mmW would be useful. Switch boxes aren't often placed well to handle this kind of coverage of the respective room.