I installed 6 Sonoff SN-ZB03 motion sensors this morning, and I’m getting so many false positives that they’re essentially useless. I could understand having one that’s bad, but 6?
Three of them seem to randomly trigger for no reason at all. One triggers any time the heater comes on, regardless of where I place it. The last two usually work but still give random false positives.
From what I’m reading, there are a lot of complaints about these. I probably should have done some research before I bought them. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m doing something wrong. Is ITEAD really selling a motion sensor that just doesn’t work properly?
I don’t see any commands listed under “Manage Zigbee Device” that allow for a sensitivity change, and I can’t find a datasheet or a manual for these other than the basic “quick start” guide. As far as I can tell, there’s no firmware update available, either.
Am I stuck replacing all of these? If so, any suggestions on better ones? I’ve read good reviews of the Hue motion sensors, but they’re not cheap.
EDIT: I’ve had some time to experiment with these a bit more. They can be made to work, but only in very specific circumstances. The ones I had outside would trigger constantly, as would the one I had in a room with a heater. They also seem to interfere with each other if they’re too close to each other. I placed one in an attic area, and one in the stairs leading up; these are working flawlessly. So if you need a motion sensor for an indoor area that isn’t climate controlled, doesn’t have another sensor nearby, and doesn’t have frequent lighting changes, these might work. Maybe for a closet? I won’t be throwing these away, but there won’t be a lot of cases where I use them.
I moved all of my movement/presence sensors to mm wave RADAR, they’re relatively cheap and much more reliable than PIR.
Which ones are you getting? I am looking for mm wave with zigbee. Can you recommend one?
I’ve been looking for a year or two and the selection is pretty limited for off the shelf solutions. Most are $60+ each like the FP1, the Tuya options, or the one from the EverythingSmartHome youtube guy.
I’ve given up on having presence detection for the time being as PIR definitely doesn’t cut it, though hopefully that guy responds with his DIY solution as I also have a 3D printer and electronics experience.
I build my own using EspHome. I tend to use a D1 Mini as the microcontroller as it has a small footprint and a LD2411S sensor module (very cheap on AliExpress ) I’m lucky enough to have a 3d printer to make my own enclosures.
Got any project details for that? A BOM, or even a link to an enclosure on things or printables?
This is the sensor module: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005921080708.html?spm=a2g0n.order_detail.order_detail_item.3.496af19cSQkowI
This is the microcontroller: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006018009983.html
This is the project on GitHub I use for the HA integration: https://github.com/Chreece/LD2411S-ESPHome
And the case I use is on this project for a very similar setup to mine: https://github.com/igiannakas/mmWave-Presense-Sensor-D1-Mini-DFRobot-/tree/main
Great answer, thank you!
How do you power your setup?
All of my wall sockets include usb power outlets, so they’re all powered via those, I’m currently working on using an 18650 or 2 to power one as an experiment, but as they’re WiFi and need to react in a timely manner putting the microcontroller into sleep mode isn’t really an option, meaning the battery life won’t be very good. The RADAR module needs a solid 5v as well so I’m not sure it will be practical.
I googled the sensor and found this github entry. https://github.com/Chreece/LD2411S-ESPHome
Seems like a pretty simple plug and play setup with an ESP device.