Does anyone own any of the Samsung Motion Sensors? I just installed mine six feet from my desk. As soon as you enter my study, the sensor is on the bottom of the wall (near the baseboard) and it is pointing to the right to the other wall. My desk is about 6' from the sensor. If I turn my chair and move my leg, it goes off. I can't believe how huge the arc is.
Is there any way to adjust this? I essentially am only using this sensor to activate a light when I walk in, and turn off the light when I walk out. But at this point, I can't even move without it detecting motion.
#2 - The delay from active to inactive is about 20-30 seconds. Is that right? That seems like a very long time to switch states.
Thoughts?
I have three generations of the SmartThings motion sensors--you didn't say which one you have, but I'm assuming you have the latest ("2018" in Samsung nomenclature, "v5" in the parlance of those familiar with the history of these products). So in 3 out of 5 cases (I'm not sure what you meant with "any"), my answer is "yes."
No, to my knowledge, there are no configurable parameters on this sensor. That being said, I don't understand the problem of "I can't even move without it detecting motion." That is what they are designed to do. If you have a Motion Lighting or (I think it can do this...) Hubitat Simple Lighting automation set up, it should handle turning the light on when you walk in and off after you walk out, while (usually) keeping it on while you are in the room (assuming you are moving around enough for it to continue detecting motion and/or have a high enough "off" delay in the automation). Is there a specific problem you'd like to have addressed here? Maybe there's another angle to approach this issue.
Nope, that's about what mine does, and it's pretty common for Zigbee motion sensors to have a (non-configurable) range like this. If you do need to configure this, many Z-Wave sensors have a configuration parameter you can set to a specific value to change this. Many of them also have adjustable sensitivity, which may help if that's truly a problem in your case as well. But my biggest problem with them is lag: even the fastest ones take a bit longer than any Zigbee sensor I've ever used to report motion to the hub, so if you're using them to turn on lights as you walk into a room, you'll be annoyed when they don't turn on until you're already halfway across the room.
PS - Despite the non-adjustable sensitivity and range, some people do "cheat" a bit on these--for example, if you put heat shrink tubing (probably difficult with how round this lens is) or tape (Lutron includes "stickers" with their sensors for this exact purpose) or something similar around the lens, you might be able to restrict its range.
There was an idea @mike.maxwell showed in one of the HE live videos where he put a little cylinder (conduit) around the motion eye to reduce the sensitivity, could always give that a try (could make it out of paper to test it if you really wanted to).
The latest.
I want a direct line from the wall it's on looking straight across to the other side. If I'm 6' away, I don't want it detecting motion. That's the problem.
Another way of stating the problem is, if I move in my chair, I don't want my light going off. I want to stand up, walk across that "sensor line", and then see it go off. When I come back from getting my tea in the kitchen and I cross that "line" into the study, I want it going on. It's as simple as that. Think of a red laser line going across and you can't cross it without spikes coming out of the wall and chopping your head off. Kinda like the movies.
I'm going to try the tape trick, otherwise, having a motion sensor in here is useless.
do samsung sell the spike walls ?
I heard the V2 ones with the darts were better.
ROFL. Would be awesome. Keep my wife out of my man cave.
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So you want a curtain sensor instead of a general-purpose motion sensor? They exist, but this isn't one of them. (If you can find power, I wouldn't be surprised if you could actually take the exact type of sensor you mentioned and connect it to something to make it respond over Z-Wave or Zigbee, but that's another story/project. ) I see you're looking into the lens modification a couple of us have mentioned, which I've never tried myself but have seen others do successfully, so good luck! I'm sure you'll figure something out.
Though I must confess, the automation still has me confused: wouldn't a motion sensor that knows when you come into the room (turning it active), when you're still in the room (creating motion to keep it active), and when you leave (when it stays inactive for a specified time)--which it sounds like you already have--work just as well for lighting automation? That is how most people use motion sensors, usually with great success. If you live alone (so no one else would trip the sensor and confuse your automation) and never quickly leave and re-enter a room (so the sensor has time to reset), I could see this idea working and applaud the creativity in any case.
In essence, here's what I've come up with in case anyone runs across this thread and needs help. The rule triggers when the motion sensor is active and only when it's in the Evening or Night. At that point, it raises the lamp to a white color, sets the temperature to 2850 which according to some articles I've read is the sweet spot for brightness. Otherwise, when it goes inactive for 10 minutes, it sets the dimmer to 0, essentially "turning off" the bulb.
So the solution is pretty much just dimming the light to 0 so that the light is not on all the time when I'm in bed or away for more than 10 minutes. It's not a really a solution to my problem, but it's the best I can do.
OR:
Put some tape around the sensor and try to create that laser-like pointer to the wall so that I get my lights going on and off whenever I enter or exit no matter what the time interval may be.
And as an added bonus, the spikes will activate whenever there is a high level of estrogen detected by a multi-purpose sensor. Now that would be cool!
Thanks guys for your help BTW...
EDIT: This is not working correctly. I think I need to put a REPEAT rule for the ELSE-IF so it's constantly in a state where it's waiting for it to go inactive for 10 minutes. It's late here so I'm off to bed. Will work on this tomorrow and edit appropriately.
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The biggest problem with your rule is that your ELSE-IF will never run. Your trigger is the motion sensor turning active. Your ELSE-IF is testing for the motion being inactive. That will always be false because this rule will never run (being triggered only by motion = active) when that condition is true. You could change that by making the trigger "changes" instead of "active."
There are other problems, too: notably, even if the rest worked as intended, your bulb would always turn off 10 minutes after motion started, regardless of how long it stayed active or how many times it becomes active again after that (and every) time. This is because nothing is cancelling your 10-minute delay, so it gets set on every active event. Instead of your wait and your dim action, I'd suggest using a "Turn off" or "Dim" action with a delay of 10 minutes and the "cancel" flag set (this can be done all as one action if you want, but separating the delay with these options out into its own action is fine too). Then, add a "Cancel Delayed Actions" action to the first half of your IF block (to cancel the timer ticking on this delay when motion becomes active again).
There are further oddities with your rule that are not necessarily problems but I think you should know:
- "Start raising" is best paired with a "stop raising" (I'm guessing they put it in here with the intent of being used for button devices that you can then use these commands with to effectively dim/brighten while the button is being held). That being said, without a "stop," the "start" will just go up to 100 (or 99 or whatever the device maximum is)--which is what you're doing in the next step, which will run immediately after this one begins. You'd probably get nearly the same behavior without this since the light should nearly instantly turn on anyway. If you want a gradual dim, you'll get that effect but with much better control if you use a "dim" action with a fade duration specified.
- You're setting the bulb to white (probably in the bulb's "color mode") and then immediately setting it to 2850K (probably switching the bulb to its "color temperature" mode), which is also (a specific shade of) white. Why not just set it to 2850K right away?
- Dimming to 0 turns off most bulbs, but the level (brightness) and switch state (on/off) are technically two separate attributes. I'm assuming you're using a dim here because you want the fade out? Otherwise, a plain "off" might do (and there is probably some bulb out there where this is necessary, but likely not yours).
Is there a reason you're not using Motion Lighting for this automation? It can turn lights on with motion and off after a delay, and you can restrict the turning on to only happen during certain modes, among other things. Is there something you want that it doesn't do? Otherwise, it's much easier to set up than a rule, leaves a lot less room for mistakes, and far less clicking.