So I installed Home Assistant on my server…

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Does "simplest" include installation? And by installation, I mean without it looking like crap with wires dangling all over the place?

The only place in my house I can put a mmWave where it's both reasonably optimally placed AND placed where it doesn't look like crap is tucked away under my TV pointing at the couch, where it could handle "watching TV without moving" duty. But just using 'TV on = room occupied' works even better.

The couple other spots where they could be useful, such as the bathroom, would involve an entire day project running wires behind the plaster.

I did play with one behind my headboard for a while, to detect the bed being occupied, but I just couldn't get it above about 90% accurate and that just didn't cut it.

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Yeah, but they're not local, from what I understand. So I couldn't block them entirely off the internet and have them still work.

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Internet is needed only when you pair a new device, and if you want to use their mobile apps.

Once configured, Aqara hubs are fully local, including the Matter Bridge function.

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Just for info... The above comment made me curious, so I just measured the power usage on one of my Aqara FP2 sensors. It is using 1.9W continuously. That sensor is a little power hungry, eh? :thinking:

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They received wife blessing...that's good enough for me. She doesn't need everything 100% hidden, and her approval requirements aren't always consistent, but it's her world, I just live in it. :slight_smile: She's let me fill the house w/HA stuff that she has zero interest in (would actually prefer isn't there overall) and I keep her interests in mind and respond to her requests. Win/Win. :slight_smile: (Actually, I think I'm winning a little more, but I'll never tell her that.) :wink:

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Yes, FP2 is power hungry. You can feel the heat.

Most of the Tuya mmWave sensors are not so much power demanding.

Have in mind, that most of the cheap power meters have a high measurement error at their lower scale end, especially with reactive type loads such as switching power supplies.

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I've got one of these:

WiFi, not ZigBee, but that makes about 0.3w of difference usually. I measured it at ~2.2w average, spiking to ~3w when active on WiFi.

I'd be very surprised if any of the ZigBee ones are under 1.5w.

The Seeed mmWave uses an ESP32-C3, which is a single core chip with the latest fab process. It's not ZigBee efficient, but it's pretty darn good.

A lot of the power usage in these devices is the manufacturer skimping out on $0.05 of components on the power regulation/supply side of things. You can easily have half a watt wasted just on turning 5v into 3v3 when using cheap components.

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I will try to find a precise watt-meter in the next days and will publish my measurements.
Again, this is a very good question - I have never thought about the yearly consumption so far!

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I think a lot of people skip over thinking about it.

You'll see people putting modern electronics that have 0.1w standby "vampire" drain onto smart plugs that use 1.5w 24/7/365 to "save electricity".

Sure, putting that 1993 model cable TV box that uses 210 watts while on standby on a smart plug would be good, but it's 1993. My Sony TV uses 0.1w when "off". There's no smart plug in the world that could cut down on total power usage.

I think a lot of older people remember all the "vampire drain" messaging that went around like 20 years ago when things had 10, 20, 50 watts of "standby" usage. But these days it's 0.1w, 0.2w, 0.5w.

Even ZigBee smart plugs use a TON of power. All because the manufacturers are bastards and cheap out on $0.02 components and end up costing the users $2 a year in power.

They all (at least every one I've ever seen) uses non-latching relays. ZigBee uses less power than WiFi, for the chipset, but on smart plugs most of the drain is on the relay. A non-latching relay requires constant power to stay in the non-default state. You've got a switch with a spring holding it open or closed, then an electromagnet that pulls it the other way on demand. And they tend to use 1w when energized.

A latching relay uses power to flip state, but otherwise stay where it is after it opens/closes. They use 0 power other than when actively moving from open to close or vice-versa. But they cost a couple cents more so no one uses them.

So instead everyone gets plugs that use an extra watt 24/7/365. Most I've seen are "default off" ones, so they use power to keep the plugs on.

It gets real bad when you have a use case where you want something on 24/7 but want to monitor the power it's using, so you put a power monitoring plug on it. And since the plug needs power to keep the relay on, you're adding 9kWh of power usage to your yearly bill solely for that relay.

That's enough power to run 2 full loads of laundry through an electric clothes dryer that uses resistive heating elements, or 5 loads through a heat pump one. It's pretty nuts what a trickle of power times 24 times 365 adds up to.

Also, I just checked my Third Reality ZigBee plugs. They pull 0.2w when off (over 1w when on). Assuming the mmWave uses the exact same ZigBee SOC or one that uses similar amounts of power, then the only difference would be the radar itself, which seem to be 100-200mA depending on design, which would be 0.5-1w at 5v. So possibly as low as 0.7w.

Edit: for the "I just want this plug to monitor power, not switch the power on/off" use case, I honestly recommend just opening the device up, desoldering the relay and bypassing it so it's always on. If you know enough about electronics to do that, safely. I've got an 'always on' plug monitoring my sump pump, for example.

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Whatever the power consumption results will be, I am sure of one thing - I can never go back to PIR sensors only controlling my lighting,

When comparing the efficiency of the mmWave sensors micro-motion detection (standing still, watching TV, reading a book, etc...) and the classic PIR sensors, the difference is like night and day.

The convenience of effective room lighting control has its price.

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There's some other sensor designs on the horizon other than mmWave that have me more excited.

One of which is able to track "ugly giant bags of mostly water", through walls and floors. And it can locate them in 3 dimensions, vertically, horizontally, and 'distance away from sensor'. So a single one of these devices, once calibrated, should be able to accurately place where each and ever human in the house is presently located. And they're not affected by ceiling fans, moving drapery, kittens, etc. I'm trying to find a dang article about it, but they worked by literally detecting large amounts of H2O somehow.

I've seen some other newer radar tech that can track around corners and in other rooms via reflection, too.

So with any luck in a few more years here we'll have accurate whole-house presence sensing that doesn't involve a mmWave sensor in each room.

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I would have expected there to be security / privacy concerns for tech such as that ..

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Here's one I've seen before.

Video on this article about it showing it in use:

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Ah, yes, that would make sense, military applications.

Reason I mentioned it was years ago we had the pest inspectors use the thermal imaging camera, which they use for detecting vermin and other larger pests. They are usually good for a chat and the guy was explaining they had to be approved by some government or similar body to use the cameras, which includes criminal record checks, because in the wrong hands you could just walk along the street picking out the empty house you were going to break into tonight.

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Every new thing comes with "oh, but this is too invasive, we need to limit it" until it becomes normalized and the bar moved.

Could you imagine what someone in 1950 would say to the notion that nearly 100% of American adults would have their current location and every movement tracked, in real time, by cell towers/GPS on their pocket super computer?

And you can already do a lot of crazy stuff with just an SDR dongle and some AI:

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What, you don't want to identify "soft targets" in your home for your weekly Nerf Gun Wars? :wink:

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That would be considered a military application :slightly_smiling_face:

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That entire species deserved to be wiped out...:stuck_out_tongue:

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I’m not sure tbh, I haven’t starting looking into them properly yet.

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Same, I’m running the haOS vm on my SSD volume.