From what people have reported in these forums, the inexpensive Z wave sensors have generally been a bit slower than the inexpensive zigbee sensors, with the Lowe’s Iris, for example, being noticebly faster then the GoControl.
That said, once you get to the more expensive sensors, such as the Aeotec or the Fibaro, responsiveness seems to improve.
There’s a lot of engineering that has to go into a sensor, including as @etbrown mentioned, power management, and some models are just better than others. And of course different use cases require different response times, so you may not even notice a speed differential if the two set ups are different.
There are some things you can do to “tune” an existing motion sensor and see if you can improve the responsiveness of a specific use case.
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First, check the batteries. Or change it over to mains power if that’s an option. And of course do not use rechargeable batteries unless the manufacturer specifically recommended them.
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if any of the response parameters are configurable, review the settings to make sure they’re what you want.
Three) many people are unaware that PIR motion sensors are not actually measuring motion, they are measuring very small changes of heat across the detection field of the sensor. that means that all of these sensors will detect much more quickly if you are moving past the sensor rather than if you are walking straight on towards it.
In my experience, it’s often difficult to find a place in a small bathroom to put a sensor because of the way the doors are set up.
I know some people add a second device to improve detection. You can either put a ceiling mount sensor with a small field of detection right above the doorway but in the exterior room or you can put a contact sensor on the bathroom door if you are a family that leaves the door closed most of the time even when the bathroom is empty.
The point of both of those is that you are trying to catch activity in the room exterior to the bathroom and then zone it with a sensor inside the bathroom.
But whether that works or not depends very much on the specific habits of the people who live there and the architecture of the space.
The challenge with the motion sensor in the hallway is getting it to not turn on the bathroom light when someone is just walking past.
The challenge of adding a door sensor is that as soon as you have a second person in the house, it’s possible that the door would be open with the second person coming in rather than the first person going out. And some people, particularly little kids, don’t close the door all the way when they go in.
- once you have the sensors you want in the physical locations you want, run a zwave repair to make sure the messages are being routed efficiently. It can take a while for all the address tables to update, so you may not see efficiency improvements until the next day.
So there are a lot of things you can try, but it can just be a challenging space to set up.