Smart Occupancy Sensor that wont turn on at night

Looking for an occupancy sensor because my kids can not turn off their bedroom light. I’m specifically looking for one that will have the ability to be programmed to not respond to motion between certain hours as I don’t want one kid getting up to go to the bathroom at night and the lights turning on, waking everyone else. I’ve looked quite a bit but cant seem to find quite the right thing. Hoping for something that will work with Smarthings but I’m open to other ideas too.

If you are looking for SmartThings apps - I may suggest “lighting director” I use this a lot for such things… so during a time or mode the lights react or don’t one way - and another time parameter react or don’t another way. You can set up to 4 senerio’s in ONE incidence of the Lighting Director. MarketPlace / Lights & Switches / Lighting Director. there are a few ways to go about this, CoRE of course will do this, but not sure you have dove into that App, there is a “learning curve” but there are those on the forum that will help you if you chose that route.

If you are using SmartThings, you can set the rules on any motion sensor so that it is ignored during part of the day and triggered and other parts of the day. So there really isn’t any issue with that.

But you can do it even more simply and less expensively by not using a motion sensor and just having the light itself turn off at whatever bedtime is.

So it really comes down to the exact specifics of what you want. There’s going to be an easy answer for it. But the answer may be somewhat different depending on the exact specifics.

To begin with, what exactly is the light in that room. Is it an overhead fixture? Is it a table lamp?

One of the things we do in our house is we have the overhead light which is networked with a smart switch, but we also have a soft night light plugged in on the wall, or it could be an LED strip.

We have a motion sensor by the side of the bed that is triggered by an intentional hand wave. During the day the. motion sensor doesn’t do anything. In the evening hours, The front of the room will turn on the overhead light, but it doesn’t turn off again we use voice control with echo for that. The motion sensor by the side of the bed turns on the overhead light in the evening hours, but late at night it just turns on the soft nightlight. We have it set up that way because I often nap in the afternoon and if when I wake up in the winter it’s dark I want the ceiling light come on. But late at night after everybody’s gone to bed I just want the night light to come on.

So, you have a lot of choices. And you’ll be able to change just what turns on what light for every minute of the day if you want.

If you use motion sensors you’ll have the option to use them part of the day, ignore them part of the day, have activity turn on a light and inactivity turn it off again or only have activity turn it on. And change that up at different times of day It’s up to you.

But if for whatever reason you don’t want to change out your light switch you can also do something very similar with smart bulbs.

My personal recommendation with kids would be to have the overhead light on a smart switch that turns itself off at a particular time and have a motion sensor near the bed which will turn on the night light with an intentional motion. That way the kids can make the night like come on if they want to, but the overhead light will likely stay off.

But you’re going to do all of this not based on a particular switch, but rather on the rules that you set up in SmartThings. As Long as the switch is one that smartthings can turn on and off, you can schedule it pretty much anyway you like.

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One more thought:

A lot of people use a nonnetworked occupancy sensor in a small bathroom. Lutron make several very nice ones for under $35. These are very reliable and work very well. Some room layouts may have an issue if the person is in the shower where it doesn’t catch their movement, so you may have to make some decisions then. But otherwise it’s a very simple reliable Solution.

Motion sensors also work great in hallways and laundry areas where people are on their feet and The sensor will still see them as active.

Typically the most difficult room to light with a motion sensor is the bedroom if you want the option where inactivity on the sensor turns the lights off again. It’s just really hard to get the patterns right. So the lights often turn off when you really want them to be on, like when you’re reading in bed.

And some people have the opposite problem, where tossing and turning in the bed will cause the lights come back on.

That’s why I let mine turn off the night light, but not the overhead light. I turn off the overhead light with either voice control or on a time schedule.

There are a lot of different ways to handle it, but there’s definitely a lot more to think about for a bedroom than pretty much any other place in the house.