#Presence Sensing and Pets?

17 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

toxic gust
#

I'm considering adding presence sensors to my smart home for lighting control (mostly to avoid them being on when not required).

However, we have three cats. Are they likely to set off the sensors (resulting in unneeded turn-ons)? Anything I should be looking out for in terms of sensors, settings and setups less likely to be triggered by them (but still able to reliably detect someone in the room)? Or am I worrying over nothing?

(moved over from #1026806516533174302 because I put it in the wrong place, sorry about that!)

atomic lotus
#

i'm also interested in feedback regarding this.

#

I noticed that my presence sensor are triggered by the cats

rapid shell
#

yes they are

#

some can lower the detection sensitivity to reduce the triggers but then they're also less responsive and accurate when humans are involved

toxic gust
#

I'm currently leaning towards a dual-sensor approach. Presence sensors in the rooms, set to turn off the lights if nothing has been picked up in X minutes. And some cheap motion sensors with a tube restricting the FoV to a narrow beam across the doorway (waist height or above), set to turn on the lights when triggered (or for some rooms, just using the switches).

Meaning that worst case, the cats in a room might keep the lights on, but won't turn them on, since unless they decide to jump real high through the doorways, they're not going to hit the on triggers.

arctic bane
#

That's pretty much what I have and it works well. For example I have an EP1 in the kitchen aimed so the PIR doesn't see the floor. PIR turns the lights on, and they go off when both PIR and mmwave are clear. (I actually did this by customising the EP1 config, the code is kicking around here somewhere but is out of date now.)

#

Works well, especially for a room that the cats aren't technically allowed in. But you know what cats are like...

atomic lotus
#

I will have a look at this. Using the presence sensor to turn off and not turning on

fair moon
#

What about using BLE sensing for the cats so you know where they are in the house?

arctic bane
#

If my cats would wear collars I would 100% do this with BLE tags on the collars, it's an excellent idea. Could add automations to make scary hissing noises from the kitchen speakers if a cat was detected in there - all sorts of things! Love it.

#

Unfortunately they will not wear collars, and it's not a big deal in most respects because they're house cats. But man, I really want to do this! Stupid strong-willed cats, not aligned with my home automation goals.

toxic gust
#

A bit of thread necromancy here since I have a new tweak to my solution for this:

Shelly's bluetooth PIR sensors have a pretty strong cutoff horizontally from the sensor. If you mount one of those upside down at about chest height, it'll pick up moving people, but not cats on the floor. (Much easier to do with these than with the usual PIR sensors with a "dome" lens that has more of an all-around view)

I now have this tied in to the dual-sensor approach I mentioned above - using these to trigger lights to turn on, and then turning the lights off when mmwave sensors that cover the room detect no occupancy after a certain amount of time.

atomic lotus
arctic bane
#

Works reliably only if your cats don't jump up on things, I'd have thought. Which doesn't describe many of the cats I've had!

#

Ingenious idea though.

regal nova
#

yes they will, and its hell, the best you can aim for is the sensors locations being optimal for humans to trigger but not the cats. something like, they can be triggered on anything above 2ft off the floor. ive also added some automations that during the night will only turn 1 light on dim opposed to the 8 in the room, so if it is a human they can still see, and if its a cat, they don't waste quite so much electricity. although if your led smart bulbs and not smart switches to normal lighting then the leccy usage is minimal anyway, it more the inconvenience of say the landing light going on in the night and waking us up, we have a kid as well so we want the light to come on for him so its annoying but has to be lived with