Best Brand? Is it OK to mix and match?

[JDRoberts]

@joecooler

For a closet or laundry room, and probably a bathroom, dumb motion sensors make a lot of sense to me. I noticed the Leviton model actually a heat sensor, not a motion sensor. Is there a difference?

For low-cost home automation, pretty much all of the “motion” sensors are actually PIR (passive infrared) Sensors which measure very small changes in heat moving across the detection field. These are inexpensive and work well indoors.

FAQ: Where to locate motion sensor for fastest response?

[image] I have a downstairs hallway that’s perhaps 12 feet long, with a doorway to a spiral staircase at one end (where the picture is taken from) and a door into the garage on the other end. As you can see in the picture, there’s a jog in the hallway. Not seen here are another doorway about 4 feet to the right of the one by the staircase, a bedroom door to the left at a 45-degree angle (you can just make out a bit of the trim on the corner of the wall, near the top), and a laundry room doorway on the right as you go through the jog. The hallway is dark and I want to automatically turn on the lights when I come off the stairway or enter from the garage. I have an Ecolink motion sensor and I’ve tried placing it in each of the four locations marked with circles. (The two near the top are …

The next level up you will find built into some cameras actually looks at visual field changes, but those devices tend to be a lot more expensive and you don’t see them in standalone sensors for home use. But if you’re already buying a Camera or a video doorbell, there are some brands that will allow you to trigger smartthings events off of the motion sensor detection in the camera.