Things I am looking/hoping for

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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It would def be a moneymaker, just a niftier type of button controller, switch, dimmer replacement! Now this may sound cheap but that Figaro for $99 isnt too bad, maybe will search for a coupon code too. Do you think there is a way to reprogram one of those? It can't be too hitech, right? Any hackers here?

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Thank you, this is very helpful!!

Now this may sound cheap but that Figaro for $99 isnt too bad, maybe will search for a coupon code too. Do you think there is a way to reprogram one of those? It can't be too hitech, right? Any hackers here?

Never played with one. I've never tried to program a Z-Wave micro-controller either. The SDK is available now apparently without a NDA from silabs.com I think.

I'm not sure how far it will get you though. Typically in these types of devices there's some IC running everything and they are just talking I2C or SPI to the communications chip. Programming that IC would be the hurdle; getting the SDK for it primarily. They're just not released without a lot of paperwork and sometimes large fees. Every once in a while you get lucky and it's made with an ESP or something silly but not typically.

I'm not going to buy one to play around with it either way. The purchasing committee has said the 2020 budget is already mostly spent for HA toys and she wants me to lay low for a while on the home automation front. I have an entire bookcase shelf of devices new in the box that I don't have installed. If you decide to buy one and figure it out let us know how it goes.

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Sorry if this was covered, looked and didn't see t. I think you're looking for 2 things, try this for tiles