(August 2026) Any recommendations for SmartThings-compatible mmWave presence sensors? There were a few posts but they are a few years old (2023-2024) and I figured people would have more experience and updates.
USA, Hub v3 (Aeotec hub), battery-powered, Zigbee/Matter-over-Thread/Z-Wave. I am using it to sense humans on an outdoor roof deck. I checked the market and I could not find any standalone Z-Wave mmWave sensors.
Hmm. I’m sort of interested in the answer to this. However I’ve tried three and none are great.
Sonoff SNZB-06P - pretty useless, frequently got stuck in a presence state and would not clear without a power cycle. Tried various drivers. I gave up on that.
Lafaer LWR01 - much better than sonoff, but it’s still temperamental, usable though. Presence detection was too slow for me to use to control lights entering a room, so I have to use in conjunction with a regular motion sensor, which loses a lot of its benefits IMHO.
Meross MS605 - I think this is also pretty useless, the issue for me is that it doesn’t maintain presence with me sitting or reclining on the sofa , so fails for the purpose which I bought it for. Ive tried tinkering a lot with the settings but cant find any combination that seems to work reliably.
I was slightly tempted to try the Aqara battery powered one (fp300) , but from what I’ve read the reviews are mixed. The USB powered one from Aqara (fp2) gets much better feedback, but I wanted battery powered.
It’s pretty good now with the latest Zigbee firmware (and my driver). I’d prefer the Matter/Thread firmware, but it brings my Thread network down.
But the detection works very well now. Maybe the best battery powered mmWave sensor out there.
How, or why, does that happen with the Aqara FP300 when running as Matter over Thread?
Based on these responses, I will try the Aqara FP300 (not sure which mode to use, yet) and the THIRDREALITY Presence Sensor R2 (the latter does not have very good reviews, but it’s worth a shot). I only need to detect within about 8 feet (2.5 meters) so we’ll see how these perform.
I don’t know for sure. I just know that even the most stable devices go offline after a day once the FP300 is used as Thread devices. You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to spot a pattern. Being a Matter fan, I gave it plenty of tries, but now I’m sticking with Zigbee. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t work well on other networks, though.
Only recently they have added this:
You know… something that should be a given… But maybe they overcompensated and now it’s trying to reconnect too aggressively.
Like a psychopathic ex , who won’t take no for an answer.
