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Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras

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Re: Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras

#21
post #16
post #3

Alternatively, if someone wants cameras (say, for monitoring of a property) but without a subscription or privacy concerns, does anyone have a recommendation?

- get a cheapo chinese camera supported by thingino firmware - install FW. - extra: install open source NVR like frigade and connect these cameras, preferably over ethernet not wifi. - extra extra: have a separate VLAN for these cameras. Now you have a secure isolated system. If you want a remote viewer, you can have a vpn tunnel to your nvr to access it from anywhere in the world. It’s not a perfect system but way m…

Great Project! I just wish, their HDB would enable filtering on which cameras have Ethernet, and/or the data-lines connected on the USB-Power-Plug, so that I could equip them with USB NIC (for the ones that don't have ethernet), and then run them with a POE-Splitter.

Having the data pins connected would also enable lots of other nifty use-cases.

Also, have they managed to forward port the drivers to a recent mainline kernel in the meantime, or are they still on ancient vendor SDK kernel versions?

Re: Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras

#22

They missed that IKEA has just released a new smart home suite including a motion/light sensor for $9.99 [1]. Full thread/matter support and some also have zigbee to maintain backwards compatibility to legacy IKEA stuff. I’m migrating from my zigbee stuff bridged through home assistant to HomeKit. Now I have thread to HomeKit directly [1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/myggspray-wireless-motion-senso...

Keep in mind that often motion sensing isn't what someone wants... great for hallways, doorways, and transitional space where someone is expected to be moving, but not great if you're going to be sitting for a bit. Presence sensing is a little more expensive but has gotten a lot better (millimeter wave stuff), great for something like a bathroom or kitchen where you might be sitting for a while but still want the lig…

MmWave is getting cheaper but it can still be cheaper to use a regular motion sensor combined with a door sensor. This won't work for the living room, but I've found the bee in box setup to work perfectly for the bathroom. You trigger lights on when you enter and lights off when you re open the door instead of waiting for the motion sensor cool down.

Re: Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras

#23
So, I had a chat with my landlady about this. I rent an apartment that can't be substantially modified, and we really can't put anything outside that is noticeable.

Something that has driven me rather crazy is that I cannot see my doorstep. I cannot really see it from the front window; I definitely can't see it from the peephole in the front door; I definitely can't see it if I'm not home. The only way to see if an object is sitting at my door, is if I go and open the door.

So that set up a quandary for me, as receiving package deliveries, or groceries or whatever, can be troublesome, because those delivery services just aren't into notifying someone that delivery is complete (the further away they are, the noisier the notifications!)

It would've been great to monitor my doorstep remotely, and know if someone put something there. So I looked into Ring and into Nest/Google Home. They literally have nothing except the cameras. A compatible, under-mat sensor is simply not a thing for consumers (was discontinued at best.) For some reason, we consumers are not allowed to have a weight-sensing mat for outdoor use.

Since I live in high-density housing, a motion-sensing camera would be stupid. It'd be triggering dozens of time every day. Also looking directly into the pool area, and I'm not excited to "surveil" my neighbors: I just wanna know about deliveries!

I think the best I can do is some sort of "corner mirror" mounted near my front window. That won't permit remote monitoring, though.

Re: Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras

#24
post #13

They missed that IKEA has just released a new smart home suite including a motion/light sensor for $9.99 [1]. Full thread/matter support and some also have zigbee to maintain backwards compatibility to legacy IKEA stuff. I’m migrating from my zigbee stuff bridged through home assistant to HomeKit. Now I have thread to HomeKit directly [1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/myggspray-wireless-motion-senso...

I get that it is a cheaper solution, but how pleased are you with responsiveness and reliability of the IKEA stuff?

I recently tested all the IKEA matter devices, and running the latest firmware I find that the latency on the motion sensor is quite high and the detection range significantly changes based on the orientation of the sensor which is unusual. Overall the devices are good value, but I'd avoid the motion sensor at the moment.

Re: Motion Sensors and Home Security Gadgets Without Cameras

#25
post #2

Looks like blogspam, outbound links to each product include an affiliate ID commission link. I would recommend investigating zwave800 based combination human presence sensors (motion sensors) which also include temperature, humidity, light detection. https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/collections/best-z-wave-sen... Or just more basic human presence sensors https://sonoff.tech/products/sonoff-zigbee-human-presence-se...

I agree that Z-Wave products are top tier. As well as SONOFF, but the particular model you linked has decidedly been one of the worst mmWave sensors in the general options available by any manufacturer. No idea why, but they never report presence or lux properly. If one doesn't want to invest in Z-Wave I'd say grab some of the Aqara FP1/FP2 sensors. The FP2 gives you full room zone presence detection, so you can put…

One of the best ZWave mmWave sensors on the market is the Everything Presence Pro [0]. It has 3 motion sensors on board: DFRobot SEN0609 mmWave, HiLink LD2450 mmWave and Panasonic EKMC1603111 PIR. It has way more than this but the package is truly one of the best combinations of sensors and software. The sensor can do multi-target tracking and the HomeAssistant tuning software to define zones is next level compared to more popular sensors from places like Apollo. And I do like Apollo gear, I own a lot of it, but the quality and execution of the EST products is on a different tier of build quality for the price. Apollo just feels cheap in comparison and the reliability and accuracy of the sensors just isn't quite there, and to their credit they keep getting better. That being said they have a long way to go to catch up to EST. For true pro level installs the Everything Presence Pro is awesome, especially because of the 802.3af support. For battery installs the Everything Presence Lite [1] is also amazing. It only has the LD2450 is still really good and has multi-target tracking as well, but definitely won't support large spaces like the Pro.

I hate to even recommend EST because they're always hard to get based on lack of availability. But, you can't go wrong with those two sensors.

And, yes, most of the options listed in the article are garbage unless you're looking for one off options.

I'm not a fan of the Aqara gear as they've had some funky limitations on the software side and I've not had good results even compared to the Apollo [2] gear.

[0] https://shop.everythingsmart.io/products/everything-presence... [1] https://shop.everythingsmart.io/products/everything-presence... [2] https://apolloautomation.com/collections/sensors

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