I am very new to home assistant and home automation. I just ordered 3 apollo mtr-1 sensors. I just want to be able to know which sensor do I use to turn on a light when someone comes in and turn off a light when someone is not in the room. I keep going under automations-triggers and the sensors that pop up are not apollo presence sensors. I see apollo temperature, lights, distance, angle, etc, but nothing like "presense". So, I have googled for hours and cannot find any solution to this question. Once I figure how to get started, I can then add different entities that can be triggered. Thank you for your help!
#apollo
obtuse ledge
barren plover
is there a target count?
if = 0 then no presence
if > 0 then presence detected
obtuse ledge
When I go to automations-when-device-trigger....that does not pop up as an option under, apollo mtr-1 device. I could be in the wrong area to set up this automation. I clearly have no idea. Thank you for responding.
barren plover
use a numeric entity trigger to automate on changes to the count
looking at the esphome code for the mtr-1 the entity you want from the device will be presence_target_count
then if you set the numeric entity lower limit to 0 it should trigger on someone entering the room
to get the reverse you use upper limit of 1 so when it drops to 0 detections it triggers
obtuse ledge
that definitely sets me in the right direction. Thank you for your time. I am very appreciative. You can go hours and hours down a rabbit hole and get nowhere.
barren plover
no worries, i hope you get it sorted. i am a little supprised they dont have a generic on/off occupency entity in addition to count to be honest. maybe they will update in future. but you should be able to achive what you want with the numbers anyway.
obtuse ledge
They really need to dummy this stuff down. lol
barren plover
once you get the basics on how things work and where to look you will be supprised how quickly you will pick it up. just take it 1 step at a time and enjoy the wins. dont try and automate entire buildings all at once otherwise you will never get to the end
obtuse ledge
Thanks for words of encouragement, Michael.
kindred sonnet
the mtr-1 is a bit more complicated than most since it offers tracking of up to 3 people (with angle, direction, speed, resolution and distance from sensor for each) and also 3 zones. it also offers separate counters for presence, moving and still targets both overall and in each zone.
obtuse ledge
Would you recommend a simpler motion sensor? I also have cats, so I am not sure they even make one that goes off weight.
barren plover
pretty much all mmwave sensors are going to detect cats.
you could try something like the "Everything Presence One" with both PIR and mmwave
that way you could tune the sensitivity of the PIR to activate on human but not cat (wont be perfect but mostly doable)
pir is not good for continued detection though so you could use PIR for light on and mmwave clearing for off.
that would mean cat could keep the light on if its already on but not activate if its off
but thats not nessasarily "simpler"...
obtuse ledge
I will definitely look it up. Thank you
kindred sonnet
i think the other apollo sensors without multi person tracking and with only distance based zones have the ability to tune based on energy of the returned signal. that should be able to make cats invisible. with the mtr-1 you would have to place it angled upwards so that it doesn't see at floor level
it's all down to the capabilities of the sensors used in the different models
obtuse ledge
I just wished there were more videos on how to do automation with that device. It gets confusing with all the entities inside of it. Especially when you just starting out with home automation. There are lot of great videos that I have found. I have found few for this device, but not really in detail for what I need it for and how add automation. I currently am using it for temperature 🙄. I tried an automation last night, but I don't think it worked.