Motion Sensor Placement for better coverage

Devices & Integrations
1

I have few ST motion sensors and trying to find the best placement in the living room so that I can get the best coverage. I have one ST sensor placed in the corner facing (slightly) downwards but I am not happy with the results.
Any recommendations on placement?

2

This should help. :sunglasses: (This is a clickable link.)

3

It depends on the vintage also for the ST sensors. I have a “older” 2015 motion sensor that’s in my kitchen on a cabinet facing the kitchen and living room. It picks up motion from the first step coming off our stairs across the living room (20 feet) and then turns on a light over the sink. One day it died so I changed the battery but I used the wrong one and not knowing that I thought it was really dead so I bought a new one. The new SmartThings motion sensor was awful, I had to be within 5 feet for it to pick up. After talking to support they said it was because the new one is better at motion that comes across it (side to side) while the old one would pick up pretty much everything (twords, away, side to side, etc) and where I had it mounted you walk off the steps and twords it. They recommended remounting it on the ceiling but then it wouldn’t pick up what we were trying to do in the living room.

Long story short after searching the forums I found that the battery I used wasn’t making good contact so I took the one form the “new” motion and put it in the old one and it came back to life. The “new” one is sitting in a box in my basement now.

So if you have “new” ST sensors keep that in mind, they sense motion going across them much better then coming at them.

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4

I will try to keep the one v01 ST motion sensor that I have at a shoulder length and see if it makes any difference.
Did not know that there is a significant difference between v01 & v02.
I tried the monoprice sensors which has ability to adjust sensitivity but its very slow so not really useful for my setup.

5

in my experience, and if you’re in the USA, the Iris motion sensor is by far the quickest and most sensitive.

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6

That’s seems to be the best sensor for this sort of application if you read all the previous posts. I ordered one last week for testing (was waiting for long time to go on sale but individual units were never on sale in last 3 mths). Lets see if I get better results.

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