Motion Sensor in Laundry room

[brmeeke]

We have a laundry room that is also our access to the garage. The room is quite dark so I added a Motion Sensor II and linked it to the switch that controls the light. Now when you walk into the Laundry room from the garage or the kitchen, the light turns on and 30 seconds later, it turns off again.

My challenge is figuring out how to tell the light to stay on longer when we are actually doing laundry vs walking through. If you are standing in front of the washer or dryer, you are not necessarily creating enough motion to keep the lights on. When the Motion Sensor determines that the room is empty, the lights turn off. I thought about creating a timer that triggers an event. If you want the light to stay on longer than 30 seconds then you press the ON switch a second time which would create a higher threshold before the timer would trigger an event that turns off the lights. Unfortunately, the problem still exists. Motion Sensor changes to No Motion and the lights turn off. I tried to use events only to control the lights. That way I have the behaviour that I want but not the speed. If you use events only then you are in and out of the room before the event fires. The only way to get the room light to turn on in a timely fashion is to link the Sensor to the switch.

Does anybody have have any ideas?

[randy]

When you say that Events are too slow, how slow are they. All of our motion lighting is controlled by Events and the lag is about a second. We use a 10-15 minute timeout by no motion, but have ways to extend it by tapping on the HS light switches.

[mnsandler]

have you tried Occupancy Mode II. it should only turn the light on. then you can use events to turn it off based on your logic and other inputs.

[brmeeke]

If I use links to turn on the light, the lights is on before I am barely in the room. Using links, I can be 2 or 3 steps into the room. Now 2 or 3 steps does not take much time but the whole room is probably only 6 or 7 steps from the kitchen door to the garage door. As my wife says, that sorta defeats the benefit of the Motion Sensor.

One thing i did think about after after submitting my post is that I am running version 3.0.6.23 of the Addon which is not current. I am going to upgrade to the current release and see if Mark has introduced any options that would let me control the OFF setting of the Motion Sensor.

[brmeeke]

Wow - did not know that at all. I am going to upgrade the Addon to the current version and then do some testing with events. Thank you for the fast response.

[Aussie Mate]

depending on the layout out the room and the location of your washing machine - you could try using a second motion sensor that is located in the position that it is only activated when you are in front of the waher. ie place it in a space between the washer and dryer.
then it it is activated you use that condtion to keep the lights on. if it not activated then the lights turn off after 30 sec...

I have used this method before ie I placed a sensor under the dinning room table in front of my wife's chair - so it would only activate when a certain chair was sat in.
i then got HS to play a number of personalised announcements while she was sitting having breakfast or dinner.

it puzzled her for about a month on how HS knew she was in the room.

[Michael McSharry]

As a matter of usability I generally provide a manual override for automated actions. One’s patterns may be the same 90% of the time, but one needs to provide design provisions for the other 10%.

As an example when I detect motion from house into garage the standard automated action is to turn garage light on and then turn it off with motion leaving garage. In addition the automation provides a 30 minute unconditional turn off of the garage light. This timeout may come into play when one enters the house through another door. For the case where one remains in the garage for more than 30 minutes the switch that existed before the automation was employed can still be used to override the 30 minute timeout. I.e the automation only occurs if the light switch is in the off position. When in the on position the automation does not activate.

i have found that additional automation to deal with cases that were not considered in the original automation results in complexity that is not needed. A lack of understanding of what will consistently happen eventually results in the automation being removed. The automation rules need to be intuitive from the end-users perspective.

The other thing to consider is use of Doppler radar rather than PIR sensors for motion detection. They are omnidirectional so placement and pointing is not nearly as limiting as PIR. I use aluminum foil to direct a beam when further limiting is required. Unfortunately the industry continues to use a PIR in the mass market even though it had many shortcomings. These sensors are under $1, but to my knowledge have not been incorporated into zigbee, Zwave or similar shrink-wrap devices. I interface them typically with WiFi using dry contact input of the WiFi device.

[devoir]

Michael,

Would you mind sharing which model of radar sensor you are using?

Devoir

[Michael McSharry]

Look at Section 14.7 of http://mcsSprinklers.com/mcsMQTT.pdf. My similar laundry room case uses uses the $7 one where the DC power is provided through the wall behind the sensor into the garage and the mains switching is wired into the existing switch jbox. No tap into HA system as all necessary logic is self-contained within the unit. I like this one because of good sensitivity adjustment to restrict the detection to just laundry room and not into adjoining hallway.

The interface example in mcsMQTT.pdf just uses the relay output as a discrete input for interfacing to HA system via WiFi. For this use I would use the second $1 one if range adjustment is not needed.

The very common $1 one shown later in the section is used just like a PIR that has a discrete on/off connection. It works surprisingly well and does not have the false positives due to shadows and wind effects. Detection is extremely fast. I have not experienced false positives other than actual motion from a disrance that is further away than I had expected.

They detect objects that reflect microwave frequencies so metallic or water-based (e.g. humans). It can be put in a plastic case for outdoor use. It has no range adjustment. I added a capacitor to the power line to assure it does not disturb power to the micro that I used for the WiFi interface. I put a piece of aluminum foil between it and the wall on which it is mounted so detection of motion behind the wall does not occur.

with all the variety of PIR units which try to discriminate with additional internal circuitry, I am surprised that nobody in the mainstream is making Doppler sensors to satisfy some of the motion detection needs.

[brmeeke]

Mark,

I have done some testing using the Occupancy Mode II as well as Security. From what I can tell, both modes will turn on the light but need a separate event to turn the light off again. That addresses my original question. However, I have also discovered a couple of other operating characteristics that I don't really understand.

1/ With either of these two settings, HS always reports MOTION regardless of when it was last activated. I can only assume that this is a byproduct of the Occupancy Mode setting. Is it possible for the Sensor to report to HS when the room is empty?

2/ After the light goes out (I have the timer set to 2 minutes), the motion sensor seems to need a period of time with the light turned off before it will reactivate the switch. I have not done any testing to figure out the duration of this "rest" period. I know that it is not the way that the Sensor worked when I used Occupancy Mode I. If you are in the room beyond the 2 minute period, there does not seem to be anything that you can do to force the Motion Sensor to trigger the light switch. I can see the light blink on the front of the Motion Sensor but it does not seem to want to activate the light. However, if you leave the room and then come back after a short period of time, the light will then turn on again.

I will do some more testing but would be curious to know if you have any thoughts.


Thanks

Brian

[viroid]

You can use the concept of Wasp In a Box to determine if the room is occupied, then control lighting based on occupancy.

Bedroom 1 is a simple WIAB config. If motion detected, room is occupied. If door is closed, room is secure. If door opens, then occupancy status is unknown. The additional logic in that 'Unknown' rule handles scenarios like when someone walks into the room but doesn't close the door, OR if the door is opened and closed before the motion sensor has reached the 1 minute mark.

The rules for the Master Bedroom leverage the motion sensor outside of the MBR as a boundary in addition to the door because we almost never close the master bedroom door. It took me a few iterations, but I found that I had to include the MBR Motion in the logic because otherwise movement in the Office alone would cause the MBR to be marked Unknown even though someone was sitting in there.

I also use a modified version of this for 'whole house' occupancy, If all exterior doors are closed, house is secure, if motion detected house is occupied, house remains occupied until an exterior door is opened again. Overall it works very well.


...v

[viroid]

Turning the lights on and off requires two rules, I'm leveraging a virtual 'Automatic Lighting Control' device which I can use to enable/disable occupancy based control of the lights. These virtual ACL devices have voice control enabled so that I can turn it on or off easily using an App, Alexa, or Google Assistant

Hope this gives you some ideas.

[mnsandler]

1/ With either of these two settings, HS always reports MOTION regardless of when it was last activated. I can only assume that this is a byproduct of the Occupancy Mode setting. Is it possible for the Sensor to report to HS when the room is empty?

Brian,
With these modes, the Off is sent via another group. I don't think i have added the hs device to capture this. I'll have to add this to the next beta

[brmeeke]

Mark
i have implemented the OFF function with a separate event. That works as expected. Do you have any thoughts on the delay that I am experiencing after the light turns OFF??

appreciate your help getting HS to update the status of the Motion Sensor

[mnsandler]

Mark
i have implemented the OFF function with a separate event. That works as expected. Do you have any thoughts on the delay that I am experiencing after the light turns OFF??

appreciate your help getting HS to update the status of the Motion Sensor

so with the Mode you have selected, the plugin will not manage the Off status

we may be able to write a script cmd to set the sensor Off. i do the following to turn off my insteon door lock.

Run it as Execute Immediate script command

&hs.setdevicevaluebyname "Mudroom Door Lock", 0

you should be able to do the same for your motion sensor hs device according to your logic