Best Motion Sensor (battery)

[lodi]

Looking for a handful of battery operated motion sensors to tie into some lighting scenes. It does not look like there are a ton of reliable options. Does anyone have a recommendation?

I like the aesthetics of the Aeotec Multisensor 6 (ZW100), along with the additional functionality that comes with it being a multisensor, but i read somewhere that the battery life is poor. Does anyone have firsthand experience?

For motion only it looks like the Ecolink PIR Motion Sensor is well rated and has exceptional battery life. Good value too. Thoughts here?

Thanks,

Dave

[waynehead99]

My Aeotec's last about 6 months on their batteries, and my ecolinks installed 2 years ago are still on their original batteries and kicking strong.

I also think the ecolinks respond a lot quicker, really good unit and cheap.

[lodi]

Thanks for the quick reply. Thanks exactly the info I was looking for. I will order a few of the Ecolinks to try out. Do they have a range? Will one suffice in a large room?

[Kerat]

+1 for ecolink pir. I set the jumper on mine to test mode and they are rock solid.


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[waynehead99]

Thanks for the quick reply. Thanks exactly the info I was looking for. I will order a few of the Ecolinks to try out. Do they have a range? Will one suffice in a large room?

The range is almost too much on them in some situations

I have one in a 3 car garage and it covers the whole area.

[lodi]

What is test mode all about?

[waynehead99]

What is test mode all about?

They normally time out motion after 3 min (meaning it doesn't send a no motion signal back to HS). In test mode it allows you to have it restart after 10 seconds. There is a jumper inside the unit to change this. I run in test mode as well.

[Thickman]

Another +1 for ecolink.

[lodi]

Perfect! I have four of them on the way. Sounds like that will cover most of my downstairs. I'll add some more after I get these figured out. Right now I'm planning to use them to (a) check rooms for activity before a timed event turns lights off. (b) turn lights on when someone enters a room (i.e. garage, closet, etc.). What are some other uses that you have come up with? I'm sure there are many. Every time I do something in HS it leads me down 12 rabbit trails. I find myself doing much with events and switch scenes than with the mobile ui. I did not think this would be the case.

[sirmeili]

Perfect! I have four of them on the way. Sounds like that will cover most of my downstairs. I'll add some more after I get these figured out. Right now I'm planning to use them to (a) check rooms for activity before a timed event turns lights off. (b) turn lights on when someone enters a room (i.e. garage, closet, etc.). What are some other uses that you have come up with? I'm sure there are many. Every time I do something in HS it leads me down 12 rabbit trails. I find myself doing much with events and switch scenes than with the mobile ui. I did not think this would be the case.

For me, using them to turn on lights when entering the room has been problematic to a degree. For instance, I have a bathroom I want to monitor for "occupancy". The placement of the motion sensor is critical as to not have it trigger when someone just walks by, but at the same time, has to catch them as soon as they enter the room.

I have the same issue with my hallway using only 1 sensor (it's L shaped). On one side it works great, but the other it will turn on when someone is merely walking by the hallway and not going down it. Because of this, in some areas, I don't use motion sensors yet because I don't find them accurate enough.

The same goes for my Kitchen (where I use 2 for tracking direction as well). However in the kitchen, I let it slide because of the convenience. I plan on trying to mask out the motion sensors to fix this though.

So, just a fair warning. I have a pretty open concept living area, so using motion sensors to determine exactly which room someone is in can be a pain to figure out

[MrMxyzptlk]

This is why I like to mount mine directly in the ceiling...they only trigger if you're in the room.

[lodi]

Good feedback! My initial use will be to keep lights on if there is activity when my "lights-off" event triggers. This events turns all of the downstairs lights off @ 11, however, if we are still roaming around I want to keep them on. Turning lights on will be in pretty discrete places like the garage and my walk-in closet.

@sirmeili, have you tried putting the sensor over the bathroom door so it catches people when they walk in but cannot see people walking by? Just a thought.

Thanks!

[sirmeili]

Good feedback! My initial use will be to keep lights on if there is activity when my "lights-off" event triggers. This events turns all of the downstairs lights off @ 11, however, if we are still roaming around I want to keep them on. Turning lights on will be in pretty discrete places like the garage and my walk-in closet.

@sirmeili, have you tried putting the sensor over the bathroom door so it catches people when they walk in but cannot see people walking by? Just a thought.

Thanks!

Actually, yes, but even that close to the door it will occasionally pick up a person or dog walking by. It's not up on the corner because I have the aeotec recessor for it to recess it in the ceiling.



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[Kerat]

So I do something similar with my stairwell to the basement. At the top of the stairwell I have a door. I put a z-wave door sensor on it and an event will turn on the light when the door changes to open and the light isn't already set to on. Additionally a timer restarts.
At the bottom of the stairs I have an ecolink mounted sideways and at a 45Ish degree angle. I t is set up this way in order to force a user to step on the first 1 or 2 steps before the device shows motion. When the device changes states to motion, and the lights are not already on, the lights turn on and a timer restarts.
I have my configuration setup to turn off the lights when the timer reaches 2.5 minutes.
We really don't even touch the switches. Additionally, we can manually turn on the light from the first floor and the above events won't run (in case we need the lights to remain on for a length longer than the normal 2.5 minutes.


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[waynehead99]

So my 2 cents worth very little, for my stairs I have one at the bottom and one at the top. My house is very open as well and the one at the bottom of the stairs grabs pretty much the whole floor.



It's in the corner and I am about 40 ft away when taking the pic and it still grabs me there which is a different room.

So that one actually gets multi purposed. It's used to turn the stairs lights on, but also just to turn all the lights off in that general area. I have a few places I use to turn lights on, but mainly for the reasons Frank described above, I primarily use my motions to turn lights off VS on.

Also I use command strips to mount my motions. You can take them off the walls easily without damage and I have found when I am initially putting a motion in a room, I end up moving it around a few times until it works for my needs.