You Need THIS for Reliable Smart Home Automations

Introduction

I’ve got sensors all over my house that I use in smart home automations. Contact sensors to know when a door or window is opened or closed. Motion sensors to know when someone or something is moving around. Temperature and light sensors to monitor the climate and brightness of a room. Vibration sensors to know when something is, well, vibrating. But there’s one sensor that I’ve been using for the past year that was a game-changer for my smart home.

Main Points

Sensors are a must for any smart home. They enable me to:

• Auto-lock a door after it is closed
• Pause my heating and air-conditioning if a window is opened
• Turn on a light when it’s too dark in a room
• Send me an alert when someone approaches the front door

But if you’ve played around with sensors in your smart home, then you probably know how difficult it can be to fully automate things that require bulletproof presence detection.

Let’s take lighting as an example. Sure, you can have a motion sensor trigger your lights to turn on. But what about turning them off?

Motion sensors that use passive infrared, or PIR, are not reliable for turning lights off. If you’re sitting on the couch reading or watching TV, there isn’t enough movement for a motion sensor, so it thinks no one is in the room, and you wind up having the lights turned off on you.

Any workaround to address this, like automation conditions, is just that — a workaround. The real solution to this problem is mmWave.

I got the Everything Presence One sensor one year ago — actually, I bought four of them! This little device packs a ton of sensors inside:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Brightness
• Passive Infrared for motion
• mmWave for presence detection

The coolest part about this sensor is that it is designed and sold by smart home enthusiast on YouTuber! Thumbs up to Lewis at Everything Smart Home for making this product.

I bought this device specifically for the mmWave sensor to achieve more accurate and reliable presence detection in my home. Compared with a traditional motion sensor, using mmWave is magical.

It can detect nearly any seemingly imperceptible movement, like if you’re just sitting on a couch breathing. That’s right, it can pick up your diaphragm contracting.

This has huge application for home automations, like smart lighting. Now, I can use the built-in motion sensor to turn on the lights when a person enters the room, and the built-in mmWave sensor to turn off the lights when no presence is detected.

But it’s utility is not limited to lighting.

Let’s say you want a smart home automation to run the robot vacuum, set the security alarm to away mode, or turn off the heating or air-conditioning when no one is home. Well, if you’ve got little kids at home who are too young to have their own smart devices that may indicate their location like I do, then mmWave is a game-changer.

By placing mmWave sensors in all the major rooms in my house, I can reliably know that no one is home, so Roomba can do it’s thing, or the alarm can be switched on, or the HVAC turned off, or all of those at once!

Let’s take a closer look at the Everything Presence One.

I bought the kit version, which included all the sensors I mentioned earlier. The case and USB-C charging cord and brick were purchased separately. The kit costs $63, and the case about $9. You can pick up the charging cable and power brick on Amazon, and I’ll link the ones that I’m using in the description.

To be clear, this device is not cheap, especially if you’re looking to put several around your house. I bought four because that seemed like the bare minimum that I would need to get presence detection around my home.

The case is 3D-printed, and is the biggest downside of this sensor in my view (aside from the cost). Frankly, the case is just cheap and flimsy, and I’ve had several break on me, all in the same location where the stand’s ball socket connects to the sensor housing. The folks at Everything Smart Technology were great about replacing the broken case, but really I’d just like a better one that is stronger and more versatile. A magnetic attachment like on this Philips Hue motion sensor would be great.

Inside the case you find the brains of this thing: onboard temperature, humidity, and light sensors; a 24 GHz mmWave sensor, and a passive infrared motion sensor with a 12-meter detection zone. It comes with an ESP32 System on Chip, and uses WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. ESPHome is pre-installed for direct integration to Home Assistant, which is how I use it.

Just take a look at all the entities and customization options this give you. For example, if you find the mmWave detection is too sensitive, you can adjust the on latency (0.5 should do the trick). Additionally, you can dial-in the range based on the size of your room, among other options.

You can position the mmWave board two different ways, depending if you want greater horizontal or vertical field-of-view detection. I use both methods in my home, determined by the area I’m looking to cover.

For fun, I created a motion game for my kids. If they are totally still, their bedroom lamp is green, but if they move at all, the light turns red based on presence detection. It’s almost impossible to win at this game, even for an adult, but we have fun trying.

Final Thoughts

By adding mmWave, my smart home automations reached a whole new level of reliability and creativity. Presence detection is now super accurate, which greatly expanded the types of automations that I can implement with confidence knowing they’ll just work.

Watch on YouTube

Featured Tech

Everything Presence One (motion, mmWave, temperature, humidity, brightness): http://tinyurl.com/39hdvfck
USB C Charger Block 20W: https://amzn.to/4cmjok3
2 Pack 10ft USB C to USB C Cable: https://amzn.to/3IGieCv
Ring Alarm Contact Sensor (2nd Gen): https://amzn.to/3SPUwsb
Philips Hue Motion Sensor (motion, temperature, brightness): https://amzn.to/49pK0z0
Aeotec SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor (vibration, contact, temperature, orientation, angle): https://amzn.to/47BIIix
UniFi Protect G3 Instant Camera (motion): https://amzn.to/3wpmfbE