Shower Sensor Recommendations?

I know I’m being somewhat impractical here :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m playing around with tracking room-level occupancy throughout my home by using every device I can. You open a door? It knows where you are. You turn on a TV? It knows where you are. A motion sensor is active? It knows where you are. And so on, and so on.

Instantaneous actions (door opening/closing, motion active, etc.) are helpful, but I’m finding that the most reliable devices are the ones where you can definitively say: as long as this device is active, then we KNOW that this room is occupied. For my family, so far, that’s when the TV is on, when certain fans are on, and when the shower is on. If I can more accurately track the shower status, that’ll help boost the accuracy of the entire system.

Have you played with iBeacons yet? I've been using them for what I have termed "micro-presence."

I’m strongly considering it. I’ve had this pulled up in my browser for several weeks now:

I’m think about having these in each room and using Locative on my phone as the receiver. But I think most people are doing it the other way: carry the beacon with you and keep a receiver in each room.

How have you implemented it?

With a beacon in each room and GeoFency. The beacons seem cheaper than the sensors and more flexible because they don't use much power at all. And you can vary the range of the beacons by changing the power output. I've found tweaking power essential to prevent "room overlap." Locative looks like it uses the same basic principle... web hooks.

Right now I have two sensors set up on the front porch. I first look for presence via an aggregate presence sensor that uses geofencing from both Life360 and GeoFency to determine someone has actually arrived at the house. This prevents the door lock and alarm from reacting when I just go out onto the front porch for my daily cigar. Once I've left the geofence perimeter and returned it gives me 3 minutes to get to one of the two beacons.

(We might want to spin off this thread unless you want to talk about waterproof iBeacons and insisting everyone carry their iPhone into the shower. Hmmm... that's not such a bad idea!)

1 Like

IF and only IF you can get to one or more of the water lines to the shower (optimally the actual line going to the shower head itself). You could use the temperature change in the pipe to indicate activity; with some lag after the water has been turned off which might invalidate this approach for your needs.

See the Senasys link in this thread for simple & reliable pipe mounted temperature switches. Then you'd need something connected to that switch monitored by HE per this discussion.

Alright, you’ve convinced me. iBeacon ordered!

Interesting idea; thanks for the link. Like you said, I’m worried about the lag after the water has been turned off, but it could be a fun project to try.

I have one of these connected to a contact sensor monitoring the supply line of my water-to-air heat pump. Works fine.

I’m intrigued, but …what am I looking at? :slightly_smiling_face:

An inline flow switch. When there is a flow in the pipe the paddle moves and closes the contacts. Connect a contact sensor with leads like the EcoLink DWZWAVE2.5-ECO. (I'd install it in a horizontal section of pipe.)

This may be more plumbing than it is worth for a shower, depending on accessibility, but it is the does the trick simply & quickly detecting fluid flow on HE.

1 Like

I would say this is a device issue or limitation. I have tested a few devices, and some are noticeably slower than others, some to a point where they are as you note, worthless for this.

Maybe list what device(s) you have tried?

This is a recent relevant thread that might be useful.

1 Like

I have the Konke sensors. They send an update every 30 minutes or when there is a humidity change of at least 5%. I’m actually not sure if those are configurable, although I don’t see anything obvious in the driver. They work great, and I’ve used them to automate the exhaust fans with great success. But in order to get the first 5% change, it definitely takes longer than a minute from when the shower turns on or off.

I am not very familiar with these, but which driver are you using?

I think @JasonJoel and @aaiyar use these (or did?) so maybe they can comment on these sensors performance and how configurable they are.

I’ve been using this one:

Ask and you shall receive :innocent:

1 Like

I would add unplugging Alexa to my shower routine :slight_smile:

5 Likes

I ran across this and remembered you post.

Biological radar sensor

1 Like

Wow, now that’s a cool idea! I’m not good enough with electronics to know what to do with this, but it might motivate me to learn. Downside is that it still may not be enough for my use case:

The only thing left is AI and a camera :slight_smile:

1 Like