Individual room presence

At the moment i have 2 motion sensors in the bathroom, one that covers the room and door itself and one for the shower as the first sensor doesn’t cover the shower when the shower-curtain is closed.

The problem is that i have to have the motion kill the light after a long time of not detecting any motion if one is sitting on the toilet and no motion is detected for X amount of minutes and thought there might be a better way to handle this with a “gate” solution.

would it be possible to have a door sensor that activates the light immediately when being opened and if the motion sensor detects any motion within 5 seconds after the door is opened just keep the light on. But if the door is opened and no motion is detected within those 5 seconds i would assume no one is in the bathroom and kill the light after those 5 seconds.

Will this work or what has been your solutions? Have several places where it would be better to have a gated solution instead of simply relying on motion for X amount of time.

Have another room where I have two motion sensors just a meter apart and depending on the order of the sensors motion are being detected I calculate if they are coming or leaving a room, it’s a open space and hallway without any doors and this is the best solution I could come up with, of course its tricky when multiple peaple are in the room so i have delays and a Third-Eight motion sensor to make sure no other motion detecter is activated and things get complicated real fast.

Edit, Should mention that this is just a demo solution so far to test everything out as Im building a new home and if the building regulations passes not to have any switches in the house i need to make sure everything works as smoothly as possible in all scenarios.

interested to hear how you have solved room presence generally

Most motion sensors don’t respond within the 5 second window you have described but yes it would be possible to do something like that using WebCore as it is pretty powerful.

I do have several fridge type doors that turn on lights only when doors are open (a pantry in off of the kitchen and a walk in closet off of our master bathroom but those are much more simple automatons.

The only challenge I could see with what you are describing is that there may be times that motion has been detected (due to someone just leaving the bathroom) and the door has been closed (after departing)

Honestly although I have installed smart switches into bathrooms the only automatons I have for the lights in those rooms are to turn them off if they are left on and everyone leaves the house.

@scottashell Thats my concern as well, the actual responce time, timings in general seem flaky at best.

I do however feel motion sensors are very powerful so far for my tests but there are cases when they dont tell the whole truth like when sitting still for a longer period of time, watching movie, sitting at the computer, eating etc. and thats when room presence would need to be “better” in lack for a better word.

When global variables that runs locally becomes a thing with the new rules api i do think most of it would be possible with loads of motion sensors and monitoring the Order of those being activated and scenes that override some of the automations, it just seems it would be a nightmare to handle all of it script wise, thats why im interested to hear how you have managed these things.

You might want to look at the rooms manager SmartApp by @bangali:

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@TonyFleisher Thanks Tony, started reading on it and it does seem to have Some of the functions i need and will need to invest some time in it. really appreciate the link!

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