I am new to the Hubitat community, but wanted to get some advice/suggestion. I have a spare rope light that I was going to mount under the bed so when we get out of bed they would turn on. However, I am a little stuck on how to do this. I have a generic z wave motion sensor and was going to place that under the bed but we have 3 dogs and was thinking that might cause a false trigger. The sensor is pet immune and was thinking of installing that in the corner of the room, but then realized that if we roll over in bed that would also trigger the lights. I was trying not to buy one of the under bed kits since I already had the components to make this work. Does anyone have any suggestions or willing to share how they did there setups?
Some people are using pressure mats for this. What I ended up doing was putting a motion sensor next to the bed on a dresser but faces away from the bed. This motion sensor is only activated in 'Sleep' mode and turns on some night lights. All of the other motions sensors in the room are disabled when in 'Sleep' mode. I have the motion sensor setup so that when I stand up from bed it senses motion. I'm sure others will have much better solutions but this has worked flawlessly for me.
PIR motion sensors detect a change in IR. I have one in my bedroom that turns on a smart light bulb - a kind of nightlight. I did have to mount the sensor so that it only sees me when I sit up or wave my arms. It works pretty well and doesn't turn on when I rollover because the 'change' in IR is small. Since you already have the parts, why not try it? Assuming you have a way to try different locations for the sensor with putting holes in the wall.
I’ve got a motion sensor on the dresser across from the foot of the bed, it either doesn’t activate in the middle of the night or it’s set so low it doesn’t bother us.
A "pet-immune" PIR sensor simply means that the sensed object has to be large enough to trigger the sensor. But that is based on the sensor being mounted at the suggested height in a room of the suggested size. And I'll tell you, from what I've read of the complaints about them....they aren't very immune and are prone to pet false-alarms as well. I would suspect they would set off the sensor put under your bed Whenever they walked by. But if you have an extra one you can always mount it and check the events. I would do that before going through the trouble of mounting the lights though.
I have this set up and put motion sensors underneath the nightstand on both sides of the bed. My rule is set to only trigger between 10:30 pm and sunrise. The under bed lighting comes on the moment my feet hit the floor! Works great.
I have a pressure mat in the bed (hooked to a Z-wave door/window sensor) for sensing when I get in/out of bed, but like Tim have a (Zigbee) motion sensor under the nightstand for sensing when my feet hit the floor. The motion sensor is consistently faster than the door/window sensor. This might be a consideration if you want a fast response time for those light strips.
Remember that you can put a "wall" or "ceiling" around the sensor to limit the view of the IR sensor. I've seen people on the community put a tube around the sensor to turn a motion sensor into more of a trip wire.
If you setup the light strips to where they aren't too bright and they are under the bed, then the dogs tripping them at night shouldn't be an issue unless you are very light sensitive.
I use a Withings Sleep Mat connected through IFTTT. Takes about 3s on average to trigger the virtual switch, but I use this to detect getting into and out of bed with the added bonus of sleep tracking
