Done with motion sensors

I’ve had awesome results with a basic HA system using switches and contact/tilt sensors for a couple years now. I added a motion sensor 6 months ago and have had nothing but problems. I got 3 other branded motion sensors a few days ago and still have problems.

I’m literally walking around in front of the sensor watching it flash picking up motion but it does not register motion in the app. I’m assuming it’s not reporting it… I’m so irrate about these POS.

I’m not going to keep doing battery pulls to get them to work.

End of rant

Can contest that some motions are troublesome. Can also contest that not all apps are built equally.

Saying that, I would suggest Iris Motiom Sensors and webCoRE for rules.

Understand the frustration.

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Funny thing is… Those are the 3 new ones I got a few days ago… Sitting in my basement watching my timers tick down while I’m walking around… Should be restting upon motion but aren’t… They aren’t registering motion while walking in front of them although I see the light indicating they saw me

What rule app are you using? Maybe it’s that and not the actual sensor(s)…

Webcore… It’s the sensor or app… Worked fine for 48 hr… Then all of a sudden wouldn’t send the report that motion was detected or wasn’t sensing motion

What upsets me the most is I worked for a electrical engineering company for nearly 10 yrs who specified and designed lighting control systems and now work in a building that I designed eight years ago with motion sensors and whatnot for the lighting control.

Everything works flawlessly with zero hiccups. Why can’t these sensors work the same? I can’t imagine that the “wireless” part of it is the problem.

You guessed it.

What motion sensors?
Z-Wave or ZigBee?
How good do you think your respective mesh is?
Does the motion sensor log motion in the device but just the automation your expecting doesn’t work?

Don’t rant. Provide useful information. People might be able to help you then. Ranting isn’t productive and doesn’t help you find solutions.

I have a fibaro sensor that is a wave and 3 iris sensors that are zigbee.

The automation isn’t the problem because when they work, everything works great. I’m physically walking around in front of the sensors and looking at the app and the sensors say no motion yet when I look at the sensor the led or indicator that there is motion flashes.

I have no idea how good my mesh is but some of the sensors are between 5 and 20 ft from the hub.

Take the batteries out of the hub and unplug the hub for 15 minutes to reset the zigbee mesh. Do a z-wave repair in the utility section in the SmartThings App.

If both your zigbee and z-wave devices are falling off then I would say you have a big problem. Typically it’s one or the other but rarely both. I suggest calling ST tech support.

Everything is so sporatic. I will try the zigbee reset. I’ve done the zwave repair.

Last night the sensors wouldn’t register motion. Nothing has been done and they work fine this morning… :thinking::roll_eyes:

Possible you have wifi interference for your zigbee sensors so try changing your wifi router channel or move the hub away from the router.
I know you mentioned about the distance between the sensors and hub but that’s depending on the structure of your house and the placement of your hub. Maybe move the hub to a new location.

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I have a wood structure home. The hub and router sit next to each other. How far apart should I try moving them?

if you have the device open in the app and trigger motion on it, does the app reflect that? if not, then the automation isn’t the problem.

how is the automation the problem if the device does not say it detects motion when I’m triggering motion on it?

If the device is not registering motion in the app, the automation uses those inputs to do other things.

yes, that’s exactly what i’m asking. if the app isn’t registering the motion then you have mesh and/or connectivity issues, which are never fun to troubleshoot. Is your hub away from your wifi router?

The hub sits next to the router and is plugged in with a network cable

As was stated a couple of times, you may have interference between your router’s 2.4ghz channel and the Zigbee channel within ST.

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This is a good read too

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WiFi interference is a common culprit in these situations because Wi-Fi 2.4 and zigbee occupy the same bands and Wi-Fi is a much stronger signal. So Wi-Fi can sometimes drown out nearby zigbee signals, particularly boosted Wi-Fi.

And Wi-Fi often varies in the amount of traffic during the day. Sending texts or reading emails will be light. Start streaming Netflix on two different devices in the house and it’s like rush-hour on the highway.

I have Two completely separate issues we had at our house. First, we had a plug in Wi-Fi booster. If we put it on the north wall of one room, everything to the west that was zigbee and connected to SmartThings effectively fell off the network. If we moved the booster to the east wall, everything was fine again. Apparently there was just some architectural bottleneck in that area and the Wi-Fi booster was creating a dead zone for zigbee there.

Second, I had a problem for months where my zigbee arrival sensor would think it was coming and going constantly starting every weekday about 3:20 PM. I’m pretty sure one of my neighbors had boosted Wi-Fi and a kid who got home from school around that time. But I could never track it down exactly.

So intermittent problems with zigbee devices, especially a bunch of zigbee devices at once, is often Wi-Fi interference. Z wave devices should not be affected, they operate at a different frequency.

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