[Edge Driver] A Breakthrough In Human Presence Detection

Tim's SmartThings Driver for the Everything Presence One device

The best presence sensor on the market now works with the most popular smart home platform.


Tim's Drivers - 20th March 2023

1. Overview


This Edge driver enables the Everything Presence One (EP1) sensor to work with the Samsung SmartThings platform.

You are invited to the beta testing programme. Please Enrol here.

Then follow the documentation found here

2. Driver Features


  • Smart presence detection
    
  • Real-time response 
    
  • Five additional sensors
    
  • Displays device status
    
  • Full range of device settings 
    
  • All sensors can be used in SmartThings automations
    

Smart Presence Detection

Tim’s Driver for the Everything Presence One sensor combines the Motion sensor and millimetre Wave sensor to produce a smart presence sensor which rapidly detects entry to a room and detect the continuing human presence in the space even when sitting still.

Smart Presence Logic combines the motion sensor and millimetre Wave radar sensor to produce a virtual presence sensor event stream which minimises false detection events.

Real-Time Response

A rapid response to someone entering a room is achieved via the use of a Server-Sent Event interface.

Five Additional Sensors

In addition to the Presence Sensor, the driver provides access to the two sensors that underlie the presence detection, namely the motion sensor and millimetre wave radar sensor.

In addition the driver provides details on three environmental sensors.

  • Temperature
  • Illuminance
  • Humidity

Displays Device Status

Device sensor information is provided in the detailed View of the driver.
The driver also provides device status via on screen text field.

Device Settings

The driver supports a full range of device controls and management settings.

Automations

All sensors can be used in SmartThing automations.

E.g. Turn the lights when someone is present in the room and the Illuminance is below 50 lux.

E.g. Turn the heating off when no one is present in the room and the temperature is greater than 12 degrees C.

3. Everything Presence One

The Everything Presence One is a revolutionary new presence sensor for the smart home. It combines a millimetre-wave sensor and a motion sensor to derive human presence. It also contains an additional 3 environmental sensors: light illuminance, temperature and humidity.

Further details of the Everything Presence One sensor can be found here

It can be purchased here

Documentation can be found here

8 Likes

very cool to see this working in SmartThings. Hopefully he gets more inventory/pre-orders soon.

3 Likes

Yes @Automated_House, this has moved my smart home to the next level. I have replaced my old motion sensors with Everything Presence One sensors in a few rooms. A couple of simple SmartThings automations are controlling my lighting and the Smart Presence works flawlessly. No more waving at the sensor when I am plunged into darkness :joy:. I am hoping to roll them out home-wide.

I told Lewis, he needs to ramp up his manufacturing capacity now it works with SmartThings.

4 Likes

Can it be powered by battery or does it require USB power?

Cool. :sunglasses:

Just a note: in industry terminology, this is technically an “occupancy sensor”, not a “presence sensor.”

An occupancy sensor tells you that someone is in the room.

A presence sensor tells you who is in the room.

So this one is an occupancy sensor.

We have been seeing the term “presence sensor” used for this device class in the last year or so ever since both Tuya and Aqara released their devices of this type (mm wave radar) and chose to use the English translation. “human presence sensor.” “Human presence” is a good technical substitute for “occupancy,” it’s just that a lot of people are dropping the “human” part of it. And again, “presence sensor” traditionally has meant it could tell me that “Jimmy is in the room.” Not just “someone is in the room.

It’s not incorrect to say presence: it’s just a little confusing since historically, in smartthings, that term was used when you could recognize a specific individual.

Anyway, nice work! It’s always good to see new edge drivers that expose the full capabilities of these complex devices.

Oh, and I’d be curious to see the benchmarking numbers for this device on the standard MMwave sensor tests, such as those described in the following blog article:

7 Likes

It requires USB power.
This enables the rapid presence detection reaction time and allows the environmental sensors (temperature, humidity and illuminance) to send readings on a frequent basis, so they are up to date for use in automatons.

There is no occupancy sensor capability in SmartThings, only a presence sensor.
Oh, and I think Lewis has a video comparing the Everything Presence One sensors with the Aqara.

1 Like

Bummer…that’s a non-starter for me since I don’t have power near all the locations I would want to use them.

Looks like a cool sensor, but if I wanna stick one at the junction of my wall and ceiling, I need to stick to battery power

Smart Lighting Setup

I thought it would be useful if I shared my Everything Presence One based Smart Lighting setup and device settings.

It would be great to hear about other people’s Smart Lighting Setup.

I currently have two EP1 devices. One is ceiling mounted in my study. The other is wall mounted in the kitchen.

Study

Device Positioning

My study is approximately 4.8m x 3.5m. I positioned the sensor in the middle of the room on the ceiling. Which is 2.7m high. I am getting approximately a 3.8m radius circle of coverage from the motion sensor, at floor level, which covers the door.

Device Settings

I have set the millimetre wave sensor range to 390cm with a sensitivity of “very High”, which covers me when I am sitting at my desk. mmWave Off Latency is set to 20 and a mmWave on latency is set to 0. Smart Presence is set On.

Automations

Study Light ON when Present: IF Study Presence = Present THEN Turn on Study Light
Study Light OFF when Not Present: IF Study Presence = Not Present THEN Turn off Study Light
Both running locally :star_struck:

Result

The result is an extremely reliable smart lighting system which turns the light on immediately I open the door and more importantly stays on even when I am motionless sitting at my desk. The lights go off when I leave the room after a short period of time. Saving electricity :ok_hand:

Kitchen

Device Positioning

My kitchen is part of a open plan Kitchen-Dining-Family Room which measures 14.4m x 5.3m. So will be a major challenge to achieve complete coverage. I have made a start by positioning an Everything Presence One sensor high up on the end wall over the sink, pointing across the kitchen towards the main entrance door about 7m away.

Device Settings

I have set the millimetre wave sensor range to 795cm with a sensitivity of “very High”, which covers as much of the kitchen and dining room as possible. mmWave Off Latency is set to 20 and the mmWave on latency is set to 0. Smart Presence is set On.

Automations

Kitchen Light ON when Present: IF Kitchen Presence = Present THEN Turn on Kitchen Light
Kitchen Light OFF when Not Present: IF Kitchen Presence = Not Present THEN Turn off Kitchen Light
Both running locally :star_struck:

Result

The result is a smart lighting system which turns the light on immediately I open the door and stays on whilst cooking. The lights go off when I leave. The room coverage is only partial at the moment, so I need more sensors to cover the rest of this large room but the Smart lighting system is robust.

5 Likes

Can you show us a picture of this? I just wanna see how you were running your cord from the sensor to an outlet.

Hi @eric182, I was fortunate to design and build my house a few years ago and I had Cat6 cables put everywhere for sensors, Echo dots and other devices in the ceilings. So I am powering the Everything Presence One in the study over POE from a switch in the Utility room with a RJ45 to USB-C POE adapter in the ceiling space…

For retrofits, I have heard of people taking a power feed from a nearby light.

Hope this helps. Tim

1 Like

Hey, just got my EP1 the other day and have had it setup but i cant install the drivers as the sensor doesnt show up on the page (this part of the install: Adding the Samsung SmartThings Driver | Everything Presence One Documentation). @Tim99 got any pointers for getting this to populate?

Hi domenico, have you tried:

  1. downloaded the Smartthings version of the EP1 firmware

  2. set the correct IP address in the settings screen

  3. clear the prefix settings

Hi Tim, thanks for all your hard work on this edge driver. I’ve recently been speaking to Lewis over on the EP1 discord but he suggested I post here to get a little help from you as well.

I’ve been having issues with the sensors not updating their status. After I add them, they are just stuck on presence sensor: present, mmWave sensor: motion detected, PIR sensor: motion detected, Status: device online even when unplugged. The Humidity and Temperatures do not update. I have installed the edge driver linked on the GitHub, have the SmartThings version of the firmware installed on the sensors, have the sensors on the same subnet as my SmartThings Hub and same wifi network, and have tried removing and re-adding the sensors. I have an Eero Pro 6 as my wifi router.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Try turning the listener setting off and then on again. This will help if the server-side event listener has stalled

1 Like

Ok, now getting updates within the app but having issues with automatic updating. Automations don’t work and the status doesn’t update unless I manually go into the device on my SmartThings app and swipe down from the top to refresh status

Also, still don’t have temp and humidity working

Any suggestions?

Having the same issue here, connected and working when manually refreshing the page but seems to be sticking to whichever state the sensors are in until it’s manually refreshed again. Also not seeing the temperature and humidity.

Hi all, I have now had time to look at the driver code in detail.

By any chance are you running the latest SmartThings firmware on your hub, version 000.047.00011 ?

It seems that this firmware version has introduced a bug when emitting an event for the temperature sensor. E.g.

device:emit_event(caps.temperatureMeasurement.temperature(20)
throws the error:
Invalid value for Temperature Measurement.temperature value: {value=20} error: Required field missing: unit

NB. emitting an event for the illuminance sensor and the humidity sensor are fine.

As a short term workaround, I will publish a temporary release of the EP1 driver which does not change the temperature. This rest of the functionality should work fine.

Once Smartthings have fixed the bug I will release an updated version of the driver.