Living room motion sensor/lights

Hello,
In my living room I have a motion sensor that turns on the lights.

The lights turn on when the motion sensor detects motion and sends an "On" event.
The lights turn off when the motion sensor has not detected any motion for four minutes and sends an "Off" event.

This works great most of the time. When I walk into the room the lights go on. When I leave for at least four minutes, the lights turn off.

Except when I'm sitting on the couch. If I don't move enough the lights turn off when I'm sitting on the couch.

The motion sensor seems to have a 15 or 20 second delay after turning off before it will send another "On" event.

I'm trying to think of a way to get it to not turn off if I'm on the couch.

How do others solve this problem?

Thanks,
Barry.

I've found that motion sensors aren't a good solution to situations like you describe. A partial work around however is to start a timer (15 minutes might be good) when the device sees motion. Every time motion is detected, reset the timer. Use the expiration of that timer as the off trigger.

Thanks. A timer seems to be one of the preferred solutions.

It just so happens that somebody posted a similar question on the SmartThings forum today. Suggestions Include Monitoring Power from the TV or Computer, or having a Pressure Sensor under the Seat Cushion.

Are there Infrared Heat detectors available. Those would detect the presence of warm body within a certain range?

I'm wondering if you could use a condition that there be no heat present before turning off.

Barry.

Some interesting discussions http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/20492-room-occupancy-sensing/.

If you do a little googling on Kinect room occupancy there are some who have implemented it
amazingly well. Love to see something similar in the Indigo community.

Carl

Some interesting discussions http://cocoontech.com/forums/topic/2049 ... y-sensing/.

If you do a little googling on Kinect room occupancy there are some who have implemented it
amazingly well. Love to see something similar in the Indigo community.

Yes. Excellent thread.

It seems to suggest that there is a TI (Texas Instruments) device that senses presence using IR heat signature. You could couple this chip with a Z-Wave closure sensor that detects a contact closure between two wires and handles the Z-Wave interface.

I will be looking into some kind of Indigo possible solution using this and also doing a Google search for Kinect.

Does anyone know of a Z-Wave device where you can connect two wires and detect whether there is a closed-circuit between the two wires?

Barry.

I found a Z-Wave Dry Contact Sensor from Aeon Labs ($39 on Amazon).

It's got two terminal screws – I'm pretty sure it just detects an open or closed circuit between the terminals then sends the event via Z-Wave.

I'm looking at PIR sensor modules (intended for Arduino or Raspberry Pi boards), but they all seem to be motion detectors. They compare a difference of two inbuilt infrared sensors and output a logic value depending on whether the reading from the two sensors is the same/different.

For a presence detector you would really want to compare the current infrared sensor reading against some background level. If the current reading is greater than a threshold you say there is someone present otherwise no. I can't find anything like this. I wonder if it's not possible with the available base PIR sensors.

Anybody have any experience with these PIR sensors?

Barry.

I've searched around but can't find anything that reliably detects human presence.

I don't see any Z-Wave sensors that do this, and I've looked around for raw sensors, PIR, or Thermal Heat Detectors. They all seem to target motion or ambient temperature.

I'm going to try creating a variable in Indigo, LivingRoomKeepOn. I will use two buttons on an Aeon MiniMote - one to set this variable true, the other to set it to false. I will add as a condition for turning lights off that the variable be false.

Hopefully, this will work.

Barry.

One of the ways I have approached this is to have my motion sensors turn on a "minimal" number of lights needed to do a task, pass through the room, etc, and then turn them off when I am done. When I enter a room and plan to stay, I can then reach for one of my mini remotes where I have scenes set up for a variety of activities (watch movies, room bright, room cool, etc). When I turn a setting on using the switch I also flag a variable "MotionOff_Room" to true and that is used in the motion detector trigger. This way the lights don't go off while I chill on the couch watching movies. The general motion detectors sold are not set up for all possible types of detection so it never seems to be that great.

Now, the bigger problem I am having is I set the timers, as suggested in other rooms like my bathroom, and I can't seem to get it working where it reset the timer, as posted. Is it because I have an off trigger and should only be using a state change trigger?

Do you close the doors to the room?

if so, you can use the "Wasp in a box" theory.

If you detect motion in the room when the doors are closed, it's safe to assume the room remains occupied until the doors are opened.

I ended up following suggestion of an earlier reply.

I have a MiniMote. I've assigned one of the buttons to set a variable to true and another button to set the variable to false.

If I want the lights to stay on I press the first button. When the PIR motion detector sends a "no motion detected", I don't turn off the lights if the variable is true.

The second button sets this variable to false and allows the lights to turn off.

Barry.

Can I add a suggestion tho this mini-mote solution? Also set a timer for some long period of time (3+hours?) that will turn off the lights. This will function for those times somebody forgets to push the second button.