This isn’t so much looking for recommendations on which device(s) to use, but how to implement them. That said, if you have a motion sensor that you particularly like, I am open to suggestions! I have none and will be starting from scratch with motion-based automation.
I want to automate the lights in my bedroom as fully as possible:
- During the day, lights come on when someone enters the room, and stay on as long as the room is occupied
- After a period of inactivity, lights shut off
- At night, only night lights along the floor come on if we get out of bed; night lights shut off after a period of inactivity.
Designing the automations should be no problem in webCoRE. My question really is where to place the sensor? If I place it along the floor, it should pick up motion of someone walking into or around the room (entering the room or getting out of bed in the middle of the night), but it will not pick up motion of someone sitting up in bed and reading or something like that. Don’t want the lights to shut off in that scenario! On the other hand, if I place a sensor high up in the corner of the room, like you typically see with security systems, how sensitive would this be to tossing and turning in bed at night? Seems like a fine line between picking up the motion you want it to pick up and the motion you don’t want it to!
If a sensor mounted high up would typically pick up movement in bed by default, is there any possibility of adjusting the sensitivity in webCoRE so that, for example, slight movements by someone occupying the room ARE picked up during the day but tossing and turning is NOT picked up at night? (Such that you would have to actually sit up and get out of bed for the night lights to come on.)
The obvious solution is probably to have two sensors and use the one up high during the day and the one close to the floor only at night, but that seems like a waste of money and I would consider it a last resort.
