Awesome Tips Smart Motion Lights: AVOID these mistakes!
Motion automated lights make life SO easy, but they can be a headache to set up perfectly. I’ll show you common mistakes so you know what to avoid!
Motion automated lights make life SO easy, but they can be a headache to set up perfectly. I’ll show you common mistakes so you know what to avoid!
Dumb motion sensor switch:
Philips Hue motion sensor:
Aqara motion sensor:
HomeSeer HSM200 motion sensor:
Everything Presence One sensor:
Amazon Echo Dot 5:
Lutron Caseta:
Kasa dimmer switch:
Withings sleep sensor:
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Second channel video:
Motion Activated Light Strips:
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0:00 Intro
0:26 Dumb motion light in bedroom
1:30 Left in the dark
3:11 Fading the lights is ideal
3:44 Multiple sensors
4:16 Sensor position
4:51 Time of day
5:42 Keep the lights off
6:37 Physical button
6:57 Worth the effort?
7:35 Stare down
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MUSIC
Digifunk by DivKid
The End by EVA
Deals for Days. Big home savings are happening now.
Here's the other video, where I show how I set up some of the motion light automations: https://youtu.be/1yEja8CL-5w
AHHH YES! Some LOVE for old tech Nokia 5110 and 3210 (T-Shirt)… I remember those days!
Anyway, some very useful info there, planning to help a friend with their lighting setup as their lad (a typical teen) CONNNNNNSTANTLY leaves lights on all around (and in this current financial climate (even though they are all LED bulbs, every little helps) 🤔😏 (also a subscriber to our old mate Paul Hibbert)👍 😎🇬🇧
Oh man, the number of times my wife has moaned about the motion lights. But the she gets used to them and moans when I fix them 😂 It's a lose-lose situation
Awesome video as always.
I need to purchase dimmable light soon.
Also i have made "dumb /fake" lights and once I say "I am cooking" it turns on the fake light in the kitchen and as long its on – the real lights will never go off automatically. They can be turned off manually with the switch or by saying "I am done cooking"
Really enjoyed this video Reed. Always love the incorporating of your wife and her reactions.
With my motion lights in some areas, I saw something setup in a work place that I just thougth was a little bit cool, so I did the same thing at home. instead of turning straight off, they dim to about half brightness, then will turn off another 2 minutes after that. It had the added bonus of adding that time where I can move to reactivate full brightness, but I just did it because I thought it was a cool effect :).
With our cats, and me being on a separate sleep schedule from my wife, I'm not sure we want that except maybe in the back entrance to our house where we come and go most often.
Does anyone know which pressure sensor he has under his bed? I've been looking for one of these (that can detect how much weight, so it will know if its me or my wife/kids)
Man! That is rough! The only son-in-law and no longer the best son-in-law. You made me laugh!
Automation Kill Switches are something several automaters have mentioned, and they are a life saver when you live with other people.
Sometimes automations just don't work that well when you have visitors and you need to have that kill switch
"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." —Pablo Picasso
Thanks Reed.
One thing I find super helpful is to always automate with odd numbers that people wouldn’t use. Like 99%, 49%, 1% ect for things like brightness or blind level. This way the Automation can check if the current state was automated and can continue to adjust. But if someone has set the lights in the kitchen to 100%, the automation doesn’t adjust those lights. Or if someone mid day closed their blinds fully, the automation don’t then open them. Then nightly at 2am I have an automation that resets things in the house back to an automated position, any blind that is set to 100% motors to 99% or if at 0% adjusts to 1% (not even audible). Any lights that are still on get turned off, fans set back to a desirable state, ect.
something many forget, in my experience, is PIR and pets, it can drive you nuts if you don't use conditions. My cat loved to go to the kitchen, just to turn the light on, not kidding, and then he walked out super proud. So now, the kitchen light can only be turned on if some other parameter is met like a light in my living room is on or special time of day and so on
Mike Maxwell over at Hubitat is working on getting the milimeter sensors that are zigbee, they have some that are like a recessed can light, so you don’t have random crap attached to the wall
I use PIR sensor to turn on and off… I just have Hubitat turn it off only if no motion is detected for 10 minutes.
And what about "Human presence sensores" ?
Something that I really miss in HomeKit is that you can't say "turn off lights if there is no motion for more than 10 minutes".
And what really annoys me is that before iOS 16 the timer in a automation reset after every new motion. This no longer happens!
For example “If motion is detected in the night hall, light on 2% for 2 minutes”. Every time you walked through the night hall within 2 minutes, the 2 minute timer reset. Now the lights go out while you still in the night hall.
If there is a particularly strong blow of wind my basement door moves. This triggers the first ever motion detector I installed. Same applies of the front door is opened. There are ventilation bricks into the basement and essentially it sees the main air pressure. If I was doing again I’d make sure it can’t see any doors. Unfortunately it needs to turn on if the front door is open.
Great video. I’m trying to put motion sensor lights in my kitchen. Yours seem to work pretty well. What would you recommend?
The second channel seems pointless
love your videos. always some great ideas and i like how you walk through lessons you learned. keep it up!
Great advice, thanks!
I have motion sensors in my bedroom and it’s perfect. I have two motion sensors. One looking at the whole room, and one installed under a piece of furniture, able to see only at floor level. At night, only the one at floor level turns on the light, at 15% intensity. The light remains on for about 15 seconds after both sensors see no motion (so one sensor is used to turn light on, but both keep the light on afterwards). Motion in the bed during the night has never turned on the light. During the day, both sensors turn on the light at 100% intensity. One could wonder why not use a floor-level sensor only. It's because it's difficult to scan the whole room at floor level with furniture in the way.
Reed as the authority on diy smart home your persistence in integrating it with your family is what I really enjoy about your content.
I think I've posted about how I think smart home is isnt selling as well as it could because it's not marketed as the saviour of marriage.
Lots of my friends think smart home is just talking to a smart speaker to turn on and off hue lights. And that's what they have.
However the power of automation applied correctly is infinitely more useful. Vibration pressure and contact sensors are some of the knick knacks that are a real game changer.
Specifically if you live with a spouse and family and like me you live in a 3 story where one floor is seldomly used but is necessary to access to enter/leave. But your bedrooms are on the top floor. And in the middle of the night your spouse asks oh… Can you check if we turned off the lights downstairs? Or is the garage door open? (This interaction alone is the sole destroyer of marriages I garauntee it)
Smart home automation is actually a solution you can buy to fix an otherwise uninhabitable state of mind. I'm talking about the same effects as curing clinical depression.
Do you have a GitHub (or other) repo with all your automation yaml's for Home Assistant? Just curious. TIA.
great list! i've learned most of these myself over the years of home automation, but this can help newcomers!!