Things I am looking/hoping for

I have some motion sensors, problem is, they have such a wide range of detection and I'm looking to add to my existing staircase led, the ability to flash or pulse a random color at max brightness when the vibration sensor or pressure sensor is triggered. A motion sensor would detect far too soon already have the lights on. Just want to add a few sensors to sense the pressure of steps 1, 4 , and 8, and pulse the lights when stepped on or triggered via vibration.

As for dashboard, I currently use sharptools. To me, it's great, but as always I want more and more refined. I like the floorplan ui more than I'd like to admit and for no practical reason at all. Looks pretty and I want it. Lol
I will definitely try to add some repeaters, do all zigbee devices need to be on the same frequency or channel? Is that a thing or do yall professionals buy and immediately change the defaults? I wonder things like that.

A side note, I am looking for a way to add and program gesture control. I imagine I need a gesture reading device, a zigbee communication device, maybe a coder? Idk. Looking for thoughts and ideas. I dont see anything on the market and it is potentially a great product. Button control? Wave bye to the tablet, shut off lights, then door after 15 seconds. No swiping, no buttons, not touchy. I see this with some consumer level drones and of course cell phones, and just wondering if there are separate modules or components to buy or complete systems at reasonable price.

Whoa you're the Sharptools guy! I've read some of your responses in past posts!

This is great I will check it out!

Do you know if tiles can be set to invisible/translucent/see-through ?

Have you looked in to narrowing the sensors view? I still think it would probably be your best bet. I had a smartthings multipurpose sensor that was above my doorbell for a short time. Worked for the doorbell, the dog barking and when someone would run up or down the stairs. To many false positives for my liking.

https://community.smartthings.com/t/whats-the-best-sensor-to-buy-for-pet-owners/39253/5

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I will look into this tube, I know what your saying about blocking off the field of view and that may be possible, but again, I am not looking simply to turn stair lights on by motion detection. I am looking to set an LED action to my LED strip when a specific step is triggered. I already have motion sensors. In fact I have every smart sensor I believe has been commercially created for home automation. Not every brand but every type of smart sensor. Whoever suggested beam sensor, that looks very much like what I would like but I haven't seen any smart zigbee or zwave devices. Possible to make it a zigbee with an attachment??

I actually think this may be a good working solution. If I can get it to essentially only shoot straight like a beam sensor that would be perfect. Great ideas do you know if something like a sharpie would work or something opaque but liquid like white out? Or do you think a thicker physical medium would be best?

Let me see if I can find another post on this topic. Several users have done different things such as I believe a large McDonalds straw, @bjcowles I believe mentioned this. I think a tube of the correct dimension would be what you want.
[Edited to include a link to a few examples in another thread]
https://community.hubitat.com/t/ball-and-socket-for-iris-motion/3036/16

https://community.hubitat.com/t/limit-iris-v2-detection-area-ideas/34551/4

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Yes!!! I didnt even think about christmas light set ups but that would be equally as cool! Very informative, I appreciate the help! I will get to researching it!

Also, I have another project in mind and maybe you can help. I would like to explore gesture control as a sort of button controller replacement. Ie. Wave and shut off lights, etc. Any thoughts?

I like this idea, definitely much easier and better ok n my pockets. Do you know if it essentially turns the sensor into a beam somewhat, or simply desensitized the overall effect? (The latter being that it will still detect around it vs. Only in Front of the tube?

Yes, you can pick transparent or semi-transparent colors either on a per-tile basis or in the Dashboard Settings.

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Unfortunately I have not done it as I haven't had the need. Keep meaning to grab a McDonalds straw just to test it out. The people that have done this are all active community members and I am sure would be happy to provide you their experiences if you tagged them in your post.

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Awesome I'm going to play around with this when I get back to orlando! Great stuff!

Putting a tube or straw on the motion sensor limits the field of view. so I guess you could say it's like a "beam". In my initial use, I put the sensor on one end of a kitchen counter, aimed down the length. In the middle of the night, when our cat jumped up on it, Alexa would yell at him to get down. Motion anywhere else in the kitchen, besides the counter, would not be detected.

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The suggestions for narrowing the field of view on a motion sensor with a paper tube is easy and effective. It will work well with this Centralite or this Sylvania.

Zigbee device and the hub will be on the same frequency when they are joined together. You can pick a frequency that doesn't interfere with you WiFi if you need to. But it's often easier to change your wifi router channel if needed. Certain Zigbee devices will prefer certain channels. This is not that common, but there are a few exceptions. I use channel 13 on my hub. I didn't choose it, but have never had problems with that channel and any device, or with my WiFi conflicting.

There is good info about Zigbee and Z-Wave in the docs.

Not sure how gesture control might be interfaced. But you may be interested in something like HubDuino for different types of unique inputs and outputs.

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If you want easy... link

If you want hard then you could do a lot of things. The easiest of the hard is probably to use one of the motion tracking libraries for raspberry pi. The pi can send messages to the hubitat on certain gestures and then you have a device to receive those messages and interpret them as buttons. I don't know how robust the motion tracking libraries are but I imagine there is something out there that could be used. I haven't seen anybody doing this though so I think you are on your own.

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I was thinking of an arduino with one of those ultrasonic sensor attachments (many YouTube videos of this type of set-up) , and then the zigbee shield recently mentioned elsewhere on the forum. I reckon those could be cobbled together into something interesting for controlling music, lights, blinds etc. Will have to get my soldering iron out of the depths of my tinkerers cupboard... :smile:

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I have one of those working well over wifi with Tasmota measuring distance. No polling and directly integrated with HE. I connected it using a Sonoff SV since I also control an addressable LED strip with the same device and then only needed 12V supplied to run all of it. This could be done many other easier ways, Iā€™m sure. For full gesture support it is a bit work left...

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I really like the idea of a small unit, where you wave your hand up and down for volume or brightness, and maybe another area where you wave to select the target device (eg. lighting, sound). You can make them in China (since you are there), based on my detailed spec here :smile: and we can split the profits 50:50. I have my eye on a nice yacht here in Thailand so let's get a move on and make a hundred thousand to get started lol :smile:

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Ahh - yes you will need 'something' to run HA on. I thought you were already using it. You can't run lovelace without HA.

If you're going to be new to HA I would recommend you not undertake that just for lovelace and instead try out some of the other dashboard options for HE like SharpTools.

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Awesome awesome! I love the case use!

Haha :slight_smile: Yes, let's do that! I also want one of those nice yachts I'd never have time to use...

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