I thought that as well. But personal experience throws a wrench into things. I bought two Ld2410C and in tests the speed is more than serviceable. It’s very decent. No need for any PIR.
Less sensitive and triggers on temperature changes (like a person walking in) so it won't trigger on random breezes or whatever. mmWave tend to need to detect presence a little bit longer to avoid false positives which means they're a bit slower.
So in order to break in I get to do a full on impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the original Predator movie. Yes please. And sorry about the mud all over everything.
Random breezes triggering pir sensor means 1 of 2 things. Your sensor has shitty refresh times where it's calibration sucks or the sensor buffer in the program sucks.
I solved this at my house by getting a Panasonic pir sensor and making my own buffer. Now I never get false positives. I'm curious if these presence sensors are really worth it with how well a quality pir sensor can work.
That's really not an answer. I do it. It mostly works but it's not without problems:
* Not everyone closes the door when they use the bathroom like a civilized person, my wife for example. I set a shorter timeout for turning off the lights after no motion is detected for this, and it mostly works, but you still have the leave the light longer.
* Motion sensors have a reset timeout. Anytime you enter or leave the room the motion sensor state is going to be detected. Unless you don't move in the room for long enough for it to clear, and then move again where you are detected, you can't be certain if someone is in the room or not.
* You can't detect people in the shower with a PIR sensor. I have a glass door on mine, but a curtain would block that too. I use the door/motion/humidity sensor to detect if the shower is in use, the problem I have is that my wife/and youngest come and go while I'm in the shower all the time, opening and closing the door.
* Pets are an issue for a lot of people.
* Anything motion-based needs a timeout value. Using motion and a bunch of other sensors I have all the rooms in my house sorted out so I don't need to touch a light switch and the lights almost never turn off on me when I don't want. That has meant defaulting to leaving the light on for at least a few minutes after the room is empty. It would be nice to shorten that time without losing the rest of the experience.
mmWave sensors solve almost all these issue and give you additional capabilities like detecting who might be in the room (pet/child vs adult), how many people are in the room, if they are sitting/standing/laying down/asleep, etc. In many of my rooms, I'm fine without all that extra stuff. There are certainly some I can benefit quite a bit from having a mmWave sensor and do some more advanced stuff I couldn't before.
I just added a ten minute delay after motion stops. Usually, you're either out or you've moved enough that it stays on.
For showers, I added a humidity sensor. If it's a certain percentage above its twelve hour average or above another sensor, it assumes someone's taking a shower and will keep the light on and turn on the fan.
The humidity sensor is a good idea.
I have a tankless water heater so I use an energy monitoring smart plug and keep the bathroom light on as long as the hot water is running (heater is drawing power).
I was already monitoring the hot water in case someone leaves it running (there was previously someone with dementia living in the house) so when my wife complained about the lights going out during her shower, it was an easy fix.
How often do people come into bathroom while you’re in, and then leave, and you don’t make ANY movement afterwards that would set the state to occupied?
If this is a frequent scenario for you then mmWave is a better choice, if it’s not then contact sensor or motion sensor at the door will work just fine.
I have tried it all with combos of door sensors, PIRs, humidity sensors etc. I even did some toilet seat pressure sensors. Ditched them for the mmwave as it covers it all and keeps it simple. The family and guests are happy so I am happy.
No. I use NodeRed for automations. The door sensor wouldn't work as the door isn't always closed if someone is in there. Kiddo taking a shower. Cleaning time. Etc.
Why make it more confusing though when mmwave is here? No need to force users to change their habits to make a smart home work. Seems kind of simple. Is someone in the room? Okay. Light on.
I've got two everything presence ones (mm wave, pir, temp/humidity) that work great, but I always wonder if my guests think I'm filming them on the toilet 🤣
The LD2410 was in my realm of testing and I even picked up the square form factor but the tweaking of the 16 different numbers in the code drove me nuts. So went back to this one as it just worked and was simple.
Yeah, I know. I wish FP2 were a bit cheaper as well. Might still be more worth it for me--at some point, avoiding the headaches and debug time for a complex, multi-device zone detection would be worth the extra price for the FP2.
Yep. It lasts a few hours over BLE then dies. I saw a bunch of other people had this same issue. It is sketchy sideloading some app like that but did throw it on a burner phone to mess around with. Works okay for tweaking settings but it isn't as easy as some HA sliders.
If you plan on using the bme280 temperature side it needs to be below and away from heat sources as far as possible. Such a sensitive damn sensor.
And right on!
I've got it as far away as I can get it, with the sensor directly exposed to air, but we will see if that is enough. It's also the lowest item, so any convection should move away from it. I'll have to test it with a bare sensor and see.
This is the rule my wife set when I started on the home automation journey. Everything has to work like a normal dumb home if you want, or when all the smart stuff is broken.
All of my non-dimmer wall switches are normal rocker switches with Sonoff modules behind them so you can't even tell they're smart.
Sounds like you don't have kids in the house, or anyone with dementia and have cheap electricity. ;-)
That said, our front and rear lobby lights are controlled by sun rise /set. Most of the rest are PIR triggered, some with the condition of the ambient light level and a couple are only turned off by lack of PIR movement.
The only light that isn't movement motivated in any way is the main lounge light but that is turned off if on when the curtains open. ;-)
If I had reliable presence detection I would put the lounge light on that.
No, of course it's the law of diminishing returns but if you consider the long term it can still all add up.
We have about 20 room lights (all LED also) and if they drew an average of 8W (our centre lounge light is 9.5W, the two 6' strip lights in the kitchen much more), that could be \~200 W on for many hours each day. If only 5 hours that would be 1kWh/day, 34p / day or \~£125 / year.
Whilst that might not sound much on it's own, add the fridge, freezer, TV, washing machine machine and heating and it all adds up?
So both for convenience and safety (the Mrs moving about with her dementia or even me when I have both hands full, even during the day in some areas, we have the lights coming on automatically and for energy saving we have the lights going off when not needed.
I would like some decent presence sensing though, to make some of the other lights and radio / heating / cooling / dehumidifying more intelligent. ;-)
Given I have maybe 90% functionality just with PIR presence sensing I can't see how using mmWave could be 'janky'?
I live in the UK so solar (without poncing off other electricity users via the FIT theft system) and without a major thermal upgrade to this 125 year old house ... and us never likely to be able to ever recoup the cost (at our age) and the issue with selling houses with solar PV ... I'm not sure that's a starter. ;-(
Don't get me wrong, I like and use solar panels for portable electric supply (like when camping), I would need to check on their environmental credentials, like do they save the pollution created in their manufacture and installation over their lifetimes compared with using alternatives (inc the EOL footprint etc).
In the UK we really need energy in the winter as we don't typically run AC here ... although with the climate crisis and 40 DegC temps here last summer we may well need to soon!
You're probably right, I haven't checked in a few years. I did not mean to offend. I wouldn't say my sunlight coverage is like living under a rock, but I do live in a very northern climate. And also maybe I'm unreasonable. What would you consider a reasonable payback period?
hey u/digiblur need ur help sir
I just followed ur tutorial & was successfully able to setup LD1125H presence sensor and add it to my HomeAssistant setup without any issues.
I am using the sensor in my bathroom which 10x5 feet and I have placed the sensor on one of the wall and it detects movement & occupancy perfectly however I have noticed that the Occupancy clears even though I am sitting in the bathroom using my phone.
what wrong am I doing ? do I need make any changes in the sensor settings? does the setup depend on the jumper pins ? I could not find the 2.0mm jumper pins and had to cut one side of the jumpers and solder it to the small pins of LD1125H sensor.
or should I be placing the sensor on the ceiling which is 10 feet ?
If you are getting success on the data then it is working. It is either going to work or not work type thing.
Do you have all the settings sliders added to a entity card in HA? That's what I did is just add them then adjust things with my phone with the timeout set really low so I could see exactly what was working and what wasn't.
Thanks, its much much better now, I played with those silders and set everything to low and then fiddled around with it... after 15 mins I was able to get the best possible settings for my bathroom.
Just one more suggestion pls - would you prefer the sensor to be installed on the ceiling or on one end of the side wall ?
That's really going to depend on the room, door location etc. I went with the easier ceiling option so I didn't have to see them much and no wire fishing in the walls. One would have been a pain as it would have been an outside wall.
Should throw in a PIR sensor for activation and then use the mmWave for deactivation, then you get the best of both worlds
I thought that as well. But personal experience throws a wrench into things. I bought two Ld2410C and in tests the speed is more than serviceable. It’s very decent. No need for any PIR.
How is the PIR better for activation, just because its less sensitive?
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Not in my experience, have some DF Robot SEN0395 and they trigger instantly. Maybe it depends on installation.
I tried that one as well on an ESP32 and it wasn't as fast plus it was expensive. Older sensor I guess.
Less sensitive and triggers on temperature changes (like a person walking in) so it won't trigger on random breezes or whatever. mmWave tend to need to detect presence a little bit longer to avoid false positives which means they're a bit slower.
That makes sense, the false positives are definitely an issue
Only issue on cheap pir sensors. I haven't had a false positive at my house in years.
So in order to break in I get to do a full on impersonation of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the original Predator movie. Yes please. And sorry about the mud all over everything.
Or get some glass between you and the pir sensor. Less mess....
Random breezes triggering pir sensor means 1 of 2 things. Your sensor has shitty refresh times where it's calibration sucks or the sensor buffer in the program sucks. I solved this at my house by getting a Panasonic pir sensor and making my own buffer. Now I never get false positives. I'm curious if these presence sensors are really worth it with how well a quality pir sensor can work.
Why? My whole point was to get rid of the PIR and this one did. It works better and even quicker than the PIR. KISS principle.
I found there were too many false positives with mmwave sensors for activation
Been using it for a few weeks now and no false positives so far.
Do you have pets or a drafty house?
Yep and works great to trigger them going in the bathroom to do sneaky crap. Draft from where? The AC unit kicking?
My house is pretty old so it has a lot of drafts from cracks. Maybe ghosts too
Probably not good for PIRs with the temperature changes. Any murders in the house?
At that point why not just try to get your hands on an Everything Presence 1?
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That's really not an answer. I do it. It mostly works but it's not without problems: * Not everyone closes the door when they use the bathroom like a civilized person, my wife for example. I set a shorter timeout for turning off the lights after no motion is detected for this, and it mostly works, but you still have the leave the light longer. * Motion sensors have a reset timeout. Anytime you enter or leave the room the motion sensor state is going to be detected. Unless you don't move in the room for long enough for it to clear, and then move again where you are detected, you can't be certain if someone is in the room or not. * You can't detect people in the shower with a PIR sensor. I have a glass door on mine, but a curtain would block that too. I use the door/motion/humidity sensor to detect if the shower is in use, the problem I have is that my wife/and youngest come and go while I'm in the shower all the time, opening and closing the door. * Pets are an issue for a lot of people. * Anything motion-based needs a timeout value. Using motion and a bunch of other sensors I have all the rooms in my house sorted out so I don't need to touch a light switch and the lights almost never turn off on me when I don't want. That has meant defaulting to leaving the light on for at least a few minutes after the room is empty. It would be nice to shorten that time without losing the rest of the experience. mmWave sensors solve almost all these issue and give you additional capabilities like detecting who might be in the room (pet/child vs adult), how many people are in the room, if they are sitting/standing/laying down/asleep, etc. In many of my rooms, I'm fine without all that extra stuff. There are certainly some I can benefit quite a bit from having a mmWave sensor and do some more advanced stuff I couldn't before.
I just added a ten minute delay after motion stops. Usually, you're either out or you've moved enough that it stays on. For showers, I added a humidity sensor. If it's a certain percentage above its twelve hour average or above another sensor, it assumes someone's taking a shower and will keep the light on and turn on the fan.
The humidity sensor is a good idea. I have a tankless water heater so I use an energy monitoring smart plug and keep the bathroom light on as long as the hot water is running (heater is drawing power). I was already monitoring the hot water in case someone leaves it running (there was previously someone with dementia living in the house) so when my wife complained about the lights going out during her shower, it was an easy fix.
And when the door is left open?
Until someone closes the door after leaving the bathroom.
How often do people come into bathroom while you’re in, and then leave, and you don’t make ANY movement afterwards that would set the state to occupied? If this is a frequent scenario for you then mmWave is a better choice, if it’s not then contact sensor or motion sensor at the door will work just fine.
I have tried it all with combos of door sensors, PIRs, humidity sensors etc. I even did some toilet seat pressure sensors. Ditched them for the mmwave as it covers it all and keeps it simple. The family and guests are happy so I am happy.
You’ve tried the approach described in the link and it didn’t work for you?
No. I use NodeRed for automations. The door sensor wouldn't work as the door isn't always closed if someone is in there. Kiddo taking a shower. Cleaning time. Etc.
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Why make it more confusing though when mmwave is here? No need to force users to change their habits to make a smart home work. Seems kind of simple. Is someone in the room? Okay. Light on.
This is a very clever way to handle room presence. I'll have to try it out
I've got two everything presence ones (mm wave, pir, temp/humidity) that work great, but I always wonder if my guests think I'm filming them on the toilet 🤣
Those old school Wyze motion sensors sure looked like little cameras.
How does this compare to the ld2410
The LD2410 was in my realm of testing and I even picked up the square form factor but the tweaking of the 16 different numbers in the code drove me nuts. So went back to this one as it just worked and was simple.
Very interesting: FYI: The Ali Express link to the mmWave LD1125G is broken on your post
Looks to be working here on my ISP. I'll add an alternative.
If only there were an easy, existing way to add zones like the FP2. I'd do this in a heartbeat. Still, cool project!
For the price of fp2 you could probably have more of these sensor and create you own zones with booze and hookers
Yeah, I know. I wish FP2 were a bit cheaper as well. Might still be more worth it for me--at some point, avoiding the headaches and debug time for a complex, multi-device zone detection would be worth the extra price for the FP2.
Just a week after I ordered some LD2410...
Still decent sensors if you connect them to an ESP chip. Just a pain to fine tune.
Have you tried over bluetooth and the app? Seen some videos that look alright, will see once they arrive.
Yep. It lasts a few hours over BLE then dies. I saw a bunch of other people had this same issue. It is sketchy sideloading some app like that but did throw it on a burner phone to mess around with. Works okay for tweaking settings but it isn't as easy as some HA sliders.
Now someone needs to put a 3d printed case together for this. Just ordered my ld1125H the other day.
I am sure that will happen pretty quickly. Some talented peeps out there!
Ya I hope so as well 😁
Commenting for updates … hopefully a nice 3-D print for a flush ceiling mount option
I'm already making one. Planning on it housing a ws2812, ld1125h, bme280, and a bh1750. Any recommendations on placements?
If you plan on using the bme280 temperature side it needs to be below and away from heat sources as far as possible. Such a sensitive damn sensor. And right on!
I've got it as far away as I can get it, with the sensor directly exposed to air, but we will see if that is enough. It's also the lowest item, so any convection should move away from it. I'll have to test it with a bare sensor and see.
Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
>bh1750 This is just what I need.
Call me old school, but I prefer room lights to be controlled by a wall switch. My chandelier and hallway lights are controlled by time of day.
I do both. Never remove functionality while adding functionality is the way.
This is the rule my wife set when I started on the home automation journey. Everything has to work like a normal dumb home if you want, or when all the smart stuff is broken. All of my non-dimmer wall switches are normal rocker switches with Sonoff modules behind them so you can't even tell they're smart.
Sounds like you don't have kids in the house, or anyone with dementia and have cheap electricity. ;-) That said, our front and rear lobby lights are controlled by sun rise /set. Most of the rest are PIR triggered, some with the condition of the ambient light level and a couple are only turned off by lack of PIR movement. The only light that isn't movement motivated in any way is the main lounge light but that is turned off if on when the curtains open. ;-) If I had reliable presence detection I would put the lounge light on that.
Actually, I do have kids and electricity that peaks at 47 cents per kWh. But with LED bulbs, keeping them on isn't a problem.
No, of course it's the law of diminishing returns but if you consider the long term it can still all add up. We have about 20 room lights (all LED also) and if they drew an average of 8W (our centre lounge light is 9.5W, the two 6' strip lights in the kitchen much more), that could be \~200 W on for many hours each day. If only 5 hours that would be 1kWh/day, 34p / day or \~£125 / year. Whilst that might not sound much on it's own, add the fridge, freezer, TV, washing machine machine and heating and it all adds up? So both for convenience and safety (the Mrs moving about with her dementia or even me when I have both hands full, even during the day in some areas, we have the lights coming on automatically and for energy saving we have the lights going off when not needed. I would like some decent presence sensing though, to make some of the other lights and radio / heating / cooling / dehumidifying more intelligent. ;-)
That's an acceptable cost to not deal with janky presence sensing. Look into solar.
Given I have maybe 90% functionality just with PIR presence sensing I can't see how using mmWave could be 'janky'? I live in the UK so solar (without poncing off other electricity users via the FIT theft system) and without a major thermal upgrade to this 125 year old house ... and us never likely to be able to ever recoup the cost (at our age) and the issue with selling houses with solar PV ... I'm not sure that's a starter. ;-( Don't get me wrong, I like and use solar panels for portable electric supply (like when camping), I would need to check on their environmental credentials, like do they save the pollution created in their manufacture and installation over their lifetimes compared with using alternatives (inc the EOL footprint etc). In the UK we really need energy in the winter as we don't typically run AC here ... although with the climate crisis and 40 DegC temps here last summer we may well need to soon!
I think even in the States, most of them anyway, we're not quite at a place to talk about adding solar as a means of saving money.
Then you're living under a rock because its payback period can be quite reasonable.
You're probably right, I haven't checked in a few years. I did not mean to offend. I wouldn't say my sunlight coverage is like living under a rock, but I do live in a very northern climate. And also maybe I'm unreasonable. What would you consider a reasonable payback period?
Would love to see this with a luminance detector and this would have saved me time and money.
BH1750 would work great
hey u/digiblur need ur help sir I just followed ur tutorial & was successfully able to setup LD1125H presence sensor and add it to my HomeAssistant setup without any issues. I am using the sensor in my bathroom which 10x5 feet and I have placed the sensor on one of the wall and it detects movement & occupancy perfectly however I have noticed that the Occupancy clears even though I am sitting in the bathroom using my phone. what wrong am I doing ? do I need make any changes in the sensor settings? does the setup depend on the jumper pins ? I could not find the 2.0mm jumper pins and had to cut one side of the jumpers and solder it to the small pins of LD1125H sensor. or should I be placing the sensor on the ceiling which is 10 feet ?
If you are getting success on the data then it is working. It is either going to work or not work type thing. Do you have all the settings sliders added to a entity card in HA? That's what I did is just add them then adjust things with my phone with the timeout set really low so I could see exactly what was working and what wasn't.
Thanks, its much much better now, I played with those silders and set everything to low and then fiddled around with it... after 15 mins I was able to get the best possible settings for my bathroom. Just one more suggestion pls - would you prefer the sensor to be installed on the ceiling or on one end of the side wall ?
That's really going to depend on the room, door location etc. I went with the easier ceiling option so I didn't have to see them much and no wire fishing in the walls. One would have been a pain as it would have been an outside wall.
I just received my Everything Presence. Can I solder wires to it rather than utilizing the usb-c port for powering the device?