Pressure mats. ( you put the mat under the cushion, you won’t feel it.) People use these for exactly this kind of purpose. Again, though, it’s not detecting you in the room, it’s just detecting weight on the seat. So it wouldn’t distinguish between you and your spouse or even you and your dog. But you could set it up so that it would only use the information if it also knew that you were home (because your phone was home).
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Alternatively, it may work to have a multi sensor on the chair:
You can find these discussions and more on the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki in the project report section under sensors. Also check the project reports by room for the bedroom projects, many of those have to do with occupancy.
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Thanks JD! I don’t think the pressure mat will work in this case because there is no removable cushion on the chair’s back or seat, so now where to install the mat. I read through the chair multisensor, but I don’t think there’s anyway it could detect if I was sitting in it or not, short of it detecting the axis, which would then be dependent on me using the reclined position to tell, and at that point I might as well use the open/close contact of the multisensor…?
Hi so i did mine with a ecolink contact sensor (any contact sensor would do really)
For my case my chair “drops” a little bit with my weight and cause the contact to close.
Surprisingly it works very well, its all about finding the right spot to put the contact sensor.
Ill put some pictures up when i get home
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Thanks. I looked at this and indeed when I sit in the chair cushion pulls inward, and it would be enough for an open/close magnet contact with the multisensor. However, this chair also reclines, and when the chair is reclined the sensor needs to be in a different position depending on the amount of decline. So unfortunately I don’t think this is going to work.
Ideas?
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Hi, you could look into something else that’s not related to the chair.
For example if your arms/hands are always on the desk, you could perhaps use something like this:
With the pressure pad beneath it… food for thought
Or perhaps beneath a foot rest?
All in all, i think the contact sensor on the chair would be the best, its a matter of you getting the right angle… also i believe you can play around with different magnets strength to get more distance between the contact sensor and the magnet
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Thanks. This is for a recliner in a media room, so there’s no desk. Ideally there would be a device that could detect the presence of someone in an area without movement, perhaps a heat signature?
Sorry for the delay. Here are the pics of my setup
The white thing is a powerful magnet that came in a hurry motion sensor… Any powerful magnet will work.
Nice, how did u achieve it with only 1 sensor 0_0?
Cool! added to favourite, will get to it eventually. What kind of sensor are you using?
@geek
There is now a product which exactly meets the original requirement of knowing when someone enters or leaves a room and how many people are in a room. It can also cope with rooms which have more than one doorway. It is likely not cheap.
Their main example is even as originally mentioned that of turning lights on and off based on someone being in the room. Unlike traditional PIR motion sensors it will not turn lights off whilst someone is still in the room even if they are totally still.