[ANSWERED]Motion sensor and delays

Hi,

I am new to Indigo, z-wave etc. and before buying Indigo I have one last (I hope) question.
I searched the forum for an answer for my question but did not find it.
Please bare with me because I don't know how to better describe it than below.

We have a fairly large house with a warm water boiler in one corner room.
Unfortunately warm water always has to travel 'far' to the kitchen and our master bathroom.
We have a pump installed to overcome that problem but we don't want to have it running all the time because it will create a new challenge (too much electricity consumed).

I now have 2 motion sensors (Aeon 4-1) installed that activate/deactivate the pump when motion is on/off.
I have one trigger for on and one for off (as described on the forum).

Now I only have one issue left, I don't want the pump doing its thing immediately because we also walk in and out of the kitchen without the need of water. Instead I want a delay of something like 20 seconds.

Because the OFF delay is 240 seconds by default (I think it is so for a reason so I don't want to bring it back to below 20 seconds) the pump starts after 20 seconds even if we are only in the kitchen for 15 seconds and shuts down after 220 (240-20) seconds.

So in short: I don't want the pump running when we leave the kitchen within the given delay.

Is there a way to do this?

Thanks a million,

Marcel

your can use the first sensor 2. trigger (person leaving will trigger sensor 1 again) to reset the 1. trigger.
But if 2 people come into the kitchen each 15 seconds apart it would look like someone coming in and going out again. You need another piece of info to make sure that someone is staying in the kitchen.

Indigo logic can do all of that, but you need to supply more information.

if you need help with the specific setup/config in indigo, let me know

Karl

Hi Karl,

Thank you for your fast response.

I understand there are a couple of challenges but I am completely new to this kind of stuff and Indigo specifically (not programming though).

What (additional) kind of info do you need?

Schematically this is what I want:

1. person shows up in kitchen or bathroom and leaves within 15 seconds (or so).
- pump is not triggered
2. person shows up in kitchen or bathroom and leaves after 1 minute.
- pump is triggered after 20 seconds and stops working after leaving the room
a. I don't stop the pump when one of the rooms is not in off state.
b. I understand that this depends on the delay as set on the sensor.

Is that enough info?

Thanks in advance!!

Marcel

[jay (support)]

There are multiple dimensions to your request which I think is what karl was trying to point out. Knowing when a room is truly empty vs a room that has a person in it that isn't moving enough to let the motion sensor know that it's occupied are two very different tasks.

If you're willing to trust that the person in the room is moving around enough such that the motion sensor itself will know that the room is occupied, then there are a couple of different options. The easiest would be to adjust the motion sensor's delay down to a couple of seconds so that it sets it's state (in Indigo) to off after a couple of seconds of no motion sensed (there's no practical reason to leave it at 240 unless you have another reason to leave it at that).

Create a timer that runs for 20 seconds. This will be used to countdown 20 seconds.

Create a trigger that restarts the timer (a restart will help compensate for any signal issues such as getting multiple ONs from the sensor - which shouldn't happen but it's a safeguard). This actually starts the 20 second countdown.

Create another trigger that fires when the timer expires and has a condition that the motion sensor is still ON (registering motion) and the action is to turn on the pump. So, turn on the pump if there's still motion being detected.

You then have a third trigger that turns off the pump when the motion sensor becomes OFF (no more motion detected). If the pump never turned on (because the person didn't stay in the room long enough) turning it back off is fine so you don't need any extra conditions, etc. (though you could add one that checks to see if the pump is on).

what I meant to say is indigo needs more info to make a "proper" decision

here my version of a simple solution:
to stop the action after second trigger do the following:

create variable "kitchen trigger" set value to false

setup trigger kitch1 on sensor "on":
- Condition: "kitchen trigger" = false
- action: variable "kitchen trigger" set true
- action: delayed action (20 seconds) switch on pump
- action: delayed action (21 seconds) set variable "kitchen trigger" false

setup trigger kitch2 on sensor "on" :
- Condition: kitchen trigger true
- action: set kitchen trigger variable to false
- action: cancel trigger kitch1

Thank you both!

This is very helpful in a couple of ways.

I will play around with the time set for motion off on the device.

And I like both solutions you guys created.
I am confident now that I will get it to work

Once done I will post what I have (to give something back).

Thanks again,

Marcel

I have a water pump to boost hot water pressure to some fancy tap in the Kitchen and another for a shower, They only come on when a tap is opened, I didn't think that they would be consuming power when not running, I'll have to check now.

Colin

Hi Colin,

Tapping water or not when the pump is switched on it consumes about 25 watt.
At least that is the case here.

Cheers,

Marcel

Tapping water or not when the pump is switched on it consumes about 25 watt.

Wow, I'm definitely going to have to check my pumps and see what they consume...

Hi Marcel
Have checked both my pumps and neither of them consume power when not working, not that I could measure using an inline energy meter. 300watts when running though!

Colin

Not sure who is lucky then Colin.

Me with 25 watts consumption even without running water or you with 300 watts only with running water only

Not sure who is lucky then Colin.
Me with 25 watts consumption even without running water or you with 300 watts only with running water only

It was a surprise to me to, can't really do much about it, the water pressure coming into the house is too low to support modern taps and I cant afford to have the water supply pipe replaced. At least the pumps are only running for a few minutes.
Colin

So, I decided to follow another route.

I came across this article on Instructables.

It makes all motion detection trigger settings, variable and timers obsolete and will activate the pump from where it should be activated (I believe) at the source.

It fits nicely in my Arduino/nRF24L01+ plans...