Motion sensors are popular smart home devices.They're relatively cheap and simple to set up, but often people only use them for basic automations such as turning on the lights when you walk into a room.With the right automations, there's a lot more you can do using motion sensors.
Add How-To Geek on Google Add as Preferred Source Follow on Google Discover Light the way to the bathroom at night An automation can ensure you have just enough light to see by One of the best things about automations is that you can use the same devices to get different results.For example, if you have a motion sensor in your upstairs hallway, you can set it up to turn the lights on at full brightness in the evening whenever motion is detected, so you can find your way up the stairs.At night, however, if you need to visit the bathroom, you don't want to be blinded by the hallway lights turning on at full brightness.
Using a time-based automation, you can have the lights come on very dimly during the night.This gives you enough light to find your way to the bathroom without completely waking you up.Related My smart motion sensor wasn't smart enough, so I used Python to fix it Sofa, so good.
Posts By Adam Davidson Start the day with a morning briefing A motion sensor can determine when you're up This is one of my favorite automations.Every morning, an automation is triggered when we go down to breakfast.A motion sensor in the kitchen detects the first motion of the day, and the automation then waits a couple of minutes to ensure everyone has had time to enter the kitchen.
A smart speaker then reads the morning briefing.This is a spoken announcement generated by a local LLM using data from Home Assistant.It announces what the weather will be like throughout the day, tells my kids what they have for lunch at school that day, and reads out any events on the calendar for the day.
On Mondays, it also lists the events for later in the week, so we know what's coming up, and on Thursdays, it adds a reminder to put the trash out for collection the next day, with another reminder on Fridays.It's a great way to start the day.Light up a cupboard or pantry Presence isn't an issue One downside with motion sensors is that they're great at detecting motion, but not so good at detecting presence.
If you sit still in a room with a motion sensor in it, the motion sensor has no idea that you're there.If your automation is set to turn off your lights after five minutes without any motion detected, you may find that you're plunged into darkness if you sit still for too long.This isn't an issue for every automation, however.
A motion sensor can be a great way to light up a pantry or cupboard without you having to physically turn on the light.You can add a cooldown timer of a few minutes, and unless you're planning on sitting very still in your pantry for longer than the duration of that timer, the light will always be on when you need it.Wake a smart home dashboard Don't waste energy displaying a dashboard to an empty room Wall-mounted smart home dashboards can be a useful way to see information about your smart home or control your smart home devices from a central location.
Leaving a wall-mounted tablet with the screen on full brightness all day can be a bit of a waste if no one is there to look at it.It's possible to control the screen of your dashboard remotely using apps such as Fully Kiosk Browser.You can then use an automation to turn the screen on and off.
With a motion sensor, you have your dashboard wake up when you go near it and turn off again after a few minutes without any motion detected.Get mailbox alerts A motion sensor can tell you when you have mail Close If you're expecting something in the mail, going to check your mailbox in the pouring rain isn't much fun.It would be great if there were some way to know when the mail had been delivered without having to leave the house.
That's exactly what you can do with a motion sensor.A battery-powered motion sensor placed in your mailbox can detect when a handful of mail appears and trigger an automation that sends you a phone notification or plays a spoken announcement on your smart speakers.If you're in the US, USPS can send you an email when your mail has been delivered, although this can sometimes be delayed, so a motion sensor may beat the email on some occasions.
The USPS mailbox standards allow you to install devices inside approved mailboxes as long as the devices don't interfere with delivery or present a safety risk.Sometimes a motion sensor is all you need If you want your lights to turn on when you enter a room and stay on consistently until you leave, a presence sensor is a far better choice.These sensors can detect when you're in a room even if you're sitting still.
However, there are plenty of very useful automations that only require a standard motion sensor to work.
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