Exterior Motion Sensors

What exterior motion sensors are folks using? I tried to put an Aeon Labs Multi in my back yard, and all I got was false motion, even when it was overcast.

Great question! I have been in the market for this as well. I’m looking for a good battery powered ZigBee based outside motion detector! All the inside motion detectors I have tried outside just get false positives when the sun is out.

I am using an EcoLink Motion Sensor, that i have set up w/ the PET 2 setting on the jumper to make it not so sensitive. It is under and eave, and not going to get rained on. It is designed for indoor use, but it seems to be working. I’ve only had it up for a week or so though.

I have very small eaves around my house, and I live in Chicago where our weather can be quite extreme. I think I need an outdoor-rated sensor.

The AEON multi does have a pot inside to turn down the sensitivity, I assume you tried that? maybe it was set to full gain and giving you all those false positives?

I have an aeon multi and I do have the pot turned down to minimum sensitivity. I still get false positives with it. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Yeah, I’m not sure of any other outside motion sensors. I have good size eaves so it isn’t getting wet, and it got down to 12 degrees last night and haven’t had a problem with it.

But, we will see.

Doesn’t someone make an outside HA motion detector??

@daven Yeah turning down that pot was the first thing I tried. It made essentially no difference.

It’s a non-trivial problem, because of insects, birds, leaves, sunlight… In standard alarm systems they have the same interference that is worse outside. One way to mitigate is “cross zoning” which requires redundant or close/nearby sensors, and both have to trigger within some short time window.

Barricade beams might be better - not sure if you can get any with decent battery life. Wasn’t there somebody on the forums here that applied “perimeter alarm sensors from china”? Which you would need a dry-contact transmitter for, something like Linear® Z-Wave® Wireless Door/Window Sensor or

Also Zwave “curtain sensors” would be good but we don’t have them yet

I’ve had no luck with aeon sensors outside… I’ve got another thread going about laster trip sensors that I believe someone got setup and working. I think that would be the best option.

An infrared beam sensor should work, there are weather resistant versions. Some of these sensors can transmit over a 100 feet to the receiver. On the down side they’re going to be double the cost of your average indoor motion sensor and you would be monitoring a point rather than area.

Oh come on there has to be a solution for outdoor motion detection. Every Lowes around has a microwave motion detector outside there building that opens the door when someone walks in. I don’t see those devices randomly opening the door, they appear to be reliable.

I wonder if its just a matter of connecting one of those microwave sensors to a ZigBee device. I wonder what the battery life would be. Not good i’m guessing.

I don’t know that I need a microwave sensor… also I think their range is quite short? All I’m asking for is an outdoor-rated motion detector that is as reliable as the motion detector built into the “security” light that has been screwed to the outside of my house for 20 years. How do those things do it?

Since it sounds like most of the false motion triggers happen during the daytime, has anyone tried combining the readings from the motion sensor and the luminance sensor on the Aeon Multi? So a trigger would require both < 10lux AND motion? Something like that…

I might give that a go and see if it works tonight.