Aqara Launches New HomeKit-Compatible Presence Sensor

[MacRumors]

Aqara today introduced a new Presence Sensor that is designed to keep smart home products like lights turned on when someone is in the room. The Presence Sensor FP1E uses Zigbee, but it is able to connect to HomeKit and other smart home platforms through an Aqara Matter bridge.

The Presence Sensor FP1E uses millimeter wave technology to detect even minute human movements for prompt presence detection that can be used to trigger HomeKit automations. If you want to have a light come on in the laundry room when you go inside, for example, you need a HomeKit-compatible sensor.

A Presence Sensor differs from a motion detection sensor by continuing to recognize when someone is in the room, keeping the automation active. A standard motion sensor might turn on the lights, but will turn off on a timer rather than the continued presence of a person. The FP1E is able to determine that a person is in the room even when the person is sitting or lying still, plus it can recognize when a person leaves the room to trigger an automation to turn off the lights or other home product.

Aqara says that the new Presence Sensor is able to detect presence within a distance of up to 20 feet, and it can monitor a room that is up to 538 square feet in size if it is mounted on the ceiling. The sensor is able to distinguish human movement from pets and inanimate objects like curtains that might shift from the air conditioner.

The FP1E Presence Sensor joins Aqara's previous Presence Sensor FP2, which offers multi-person detection and zone-based automation triggers. The FP1E Presence Sensor is more affordable at $50, and it can be purchased from Amazon starting today.

Article Link: Aqara Launches New HomeKit-Compatible Presence Sensor

 

[kirky29]

All my blinds and curtains are controlled by Aqara devices, never had a single issue with their products. All hooked up to homekit, homebridge and home assistant.

 

[satpalram]

Needs the Aqara Hub.

Can Matter remove the need for a hub from each and every brand?

 

[MacLawyer]

Que the paranormal comments in a month or two.

 

[AgentOSX]

Siri has been sucking so bad lately I fear a light sensor in my laundry room will cause my garage door to open.

 

[kylelerner]

Now we just need a Homekit-enabled toilet-lid motor.

 

[keldorn]

Is there a Poltergeist mode for the in-laws?

 

[CrysisDeu]

Needs the Aqara Hub.

Can Matter remove the need for a hub from each and every brand?

Probably needs thread support

 

[macduke]

If you want to have a light come on in the laundry room when you go inside, for example, you need a HomeKit-compatible sensor.

So for applications like this, I find it's more effective to get a cheaper alternative like the Lutron Maestro Motion Sensor Switch. Specifically for a laundry room, and other rooms like closets, the garage, my workshop, and storage room in the basement, it's great because I don't need smart control over those rooms in the sense of being able to control them with my phone or voice. They are more contained and dark spaces that I just need a basic IR sensor that can detect when I enter the room. You don't always need an expensive connected setup!

I have them set for different deactivation intervals depending on the room. The laundry room and walk in closet are small so it will always pick up on motion, and it's great for when you're carrying a basket in and don't have the hand available to turn on the switch, so I have it set to 1 minute delay before it turns off after it stops detecting motion for those rooms. For my garage, it is larger and sometimes if I'm in the corner getting something off a shelf behind the car it might turn off so I set it to a 5 minute delay, which works great with the high powered LEDs that I installed that make my high ceiling garage really bright. Same 5 minute timer for the storage room, which have a lot of lights that turn on including an LED bar that I wired in over our deep freezer. Then for my workshop, I put a 15 minute timer, as my workshop is a bit sprawling so if I'm in the back around the corner looking for something in storage or looking through my wood stock, I don't want it to go off. It works very well since I'm usually in the main section working 99% of the time where the sensor can see me.

My main problem with them is that you can't set an exact light level at which they will activate, so it might not be the best for some rooms, but I heard that if you turn them off shortly after they auto turn on, it's supposed to pick up on that and be less sensitive after a while. But the biggest problem is I wish that there was a way to easily deactivate the motion sensing, or have the motion sensing only work on a set schedule. That's where something like this would be more useful. After my wife shut down her daycare business last year, I have been slowly working towards repurposing that space for a movie room downstairs and have been planning out everything. A smart sensor like this would be great because I could hook it into scenes to make it not activate while watching a movie. I could setup automations such that if the Apple TV downstairs is playing, it could activate movie mode and only turn on the ambient backlight behind the TV and disable the motion sensors so it won't turn on any of the other lighting.

So while this is useful, I don't see the point in using it for simple spaces like laundry rooms, but I do see the application in some shared living spaces or bedrooms where you want to keep the motion sensors from activating at night but still want smart control.

 

[Jamie0003]

Why do companies continue to do this crap. Matter and thread is supposed to improve the smart home, yet some devices still require a hub, and so many lack thread.

Why?

 

[v3rlon]

How FAST do the lights come on when the sensor detects a person? If it is less than 3 seconds, I might be interested, especially if we can start losing hubs sometime soon.

 

[ChrisA]

Aqara today introduced a new Presence Sensor that is designed to keep smart home products like lights turned on when someone is in the room. The Presence Sensor FP1E uses Zigbee, but it is able to connect to HomeKit and other smart home platforms through an Aqara Matter bridge.

The Presence Sensor FP1E uses millimeter wave technology to detect even minute human movements for prompt presence detection that can be used to trigger HomeKit automations. If you want to have a light come on in the laundry room when you go inside, for example, you need a HomeKit-compatible sensor.

A Presence Sensor differs from a motion detection sensor by continuing to recognize when someone is in the room, keeping the automation active. A standard motion sensor might turn on the lights, but will turn off on a timer rather than the continued presence of a person. The FP1E is able to determine that a person is in the room even when the person is sitting or lying still, plus it can recognize when a person leaves the room to trigger an automation to turn off the lights or other home product.

Aqara says that the new Presence Sensor is able to detect presence within a distance of up to 20 feet, and it can monitor a room that is up to 538 square feet in size if it is mounted on the ceiling. The sensor is able to distinguish human movement from pets and inanimate objects like curtains that might shift from the air conditioner.

The FP1E Presence Sensor joins Aqara's previous Presence Sensor FP2, which offers multi-person detection and zone-based automation triggers. The FP1E Presence Sensor is more affordable at $50, and it can be purchased from Amazon starting today.

Article Link: Aqara Launches New HomeKit-Compatible Presence Sensor

I'm using mmWave now for presence detection but there is a slight issue, most of them have a slight lag or delay. I find I can pair the mmWave sensor with an IR sensor. The lights go on when EITHER IR or mmWave radar detects a person and go off when BOTH sensors see a "clear". Using them together in this way is nearly bulletproof.

Zigbee is much better than WiFi as it is its own network. (no rebooting the router to make the light come on)

But $50 is way to much to spend. I'm paying about $15 to $20 for mmWave radar. wait a little and the they will be cheaper on Aliexpress. They are still new and priced 2X over what they will sell for after a month or so.

 

[CalMin]

Why do companies continue to do this crap. Matter and thread is supposed to improve the smart home, yet some devices still require a hub, and so many lack thread.

Why?

Agree. This is really frustrating, expensive, and hostile to the consumer. HomeKit was supposed to integrate this but no-one wants to give that much control to Apple or shut-out Android users.

 

[ChrisA]

How FAST do the lights come on when the sensor detects a person? If it is less than 3 seconds, I might be interested, especially if we can start losing hubs sometime soon.

I just wrote below that mmWave dose lag. Pait each mmWave radar with an IR sensor. Or in the case of a bedroom or closet pair them with a door sensor. Then the logic goes "If the room/closet is empty and the door opens, turn on the lights. This works so fast that it is hard to see of the lights just went on or if they were on before the door opens, takes just milliseconds. (using Home Assistant hosted in Intel Celeron dual core.)

 

[ChrisA]

Agree. This is really frustrating, expensive, and hostile to the consumer. HomeKit was supposed to integrate this but no-one wants to give that much control to Apple or shut-out Android users.

The Thread standard is still to new. Give it another 5 or 10 years. Zigbee is VERY reliable. Thread was based in Zigbee but Thread is still new. You don't need a Zigbee hub. Buy one of those Sonoff Zigbee USB Dongles or the HA SkyConnect.

zigbee2mqtt is the best way to integrate zigbee devices today, by a huge margin. But this is not something the average consumer could setup.

We are not yet in the plug-and-play stage of home automation. Setting up a smart home is not something the average person can do unless they only want to control a few lights. Apple tried to make Homekit easy but to do that they dumbed it down so much that it does not do much.

 

[CrysisDeu]

The Thread standard is still to new. Give it another 5 or 10 years. Zigbee is VERY reliable. Thread was based in Zigbee but Thread is still new. You don't need a Zigbee hub. Buy one of those Sonoff Zigbee USB Dongles or the HA SkyConnect.

zigbee2mqtt is the best way to integrate zigbee devices today, by a huge margin. But this is not something the average consumer could setup.

We are not yet in the plug-and-play stage of home automation. Setting up a smart home is not something the average person can do unless they only want to control a few lights. Apple tried to make Homekit easy but to do that they dumbed it down so much that it does not do much.

Mijia smarthome was plug and play for a while tbh

 

[munpip214]

Does Aqara hub still phone home to china? One of the reasons I’ve stayed away from their products

 

[Rychiar]

the presence sensor on my ecobee thermostat unfortunately proved to be utterly useless. could not get it to trigger anything accurately at all

 

[CalMin]

We are not yet in the plug-and-play stage of home automation.

Too bloody right! My home is a mess.

Lutron RadioRa2 - lights and shades
Philips Hue - Outdoor lights
Ring - Doorbell and burglar alarm
Eufy - Cameras
Nest - Smoke alarms and thermostat
Yamaha amp - Audio through house and garden (wired)
HomePods - Audio in rooms without wired speakers
Amazon Echo - Kitchen and alarm clocks

I know I could consolidate some of these, but they were acquired over a period of time and I've been sort of waiting for an integrated soln. I won't hold my breath...

 

[ChrisA]

Mijia smarthome was plug and play for a while tbh

"Plug and Play" means I buy a smart light bulb and screw it into a socket. Siri notices and from then on I can say "Siri turn on the porch light. Siri asks if I mean the new light, I say yes and that's it. But today I need to pair the new bulb and then fiddle with some app and it takes many steps to make it work. I can do those things because I have some formal training and some experience. You can do them too.

But seriously what percent of the population can install a mmWave Zigbee radar and connect it to smart switches and the lights and make it work smoothly in 5 or six different rooms? Then we of course like to have color temperature and brightness adjustments. And we want it to work with siri, Google and Amazon voice assistant. We are not there yet.

 

[erihp]

Too bloody right! My home is a mess.

Lutron RadioRa2 - lights and shades
Philips Hue - Outdoor lights
Ring - Doorbell and burglar alarm
Eufy - Cameras
Nest - Smoke alarms and thermostat
Yamaha amp - Audio through house and garden (wired)
HomePods - Audio in rooms without wired speakers
Amazon Echo - Kitchen and alarm clocks

I know I could consolidate some of these, but they were acquired over a period of time and I've been sort of waiting for an integrated soln. I won't hold my breath...

-you- did that. perhaps you acquired all of this stuff before you realized having a separate app or means for controlling each of these systems. and that these products are not particularly open. i have a bunch of different non-homekit stuff specifically chosen because it was open and could integrate together. you have a hodge podge from vendors who would you rather you not own your equipment. easy to fix really.

to the other guy wondering why matter and thread still dont matter; they are overlay protocols that just bring complexity and regression.

zigbee, zwave and wifi can all play nice with homekit just fine.

need proof? get a cheap hubitat, or build a homebridge or home assistant backend. when you have this capability, thread and matter are pointless and may as well stay broken.

 

[Melmanoh]

Does Aqara hub still phone home to china? One of the reasons I’ve stayed away from their products

I agree I have the fp2 sensor and it wont work now because it can’t bind to their app in china it’s totally useless now . I will never buy an product from them again

 

[tobybrut]

I currently use two Philips motion sensors in my hallway. I got fed up with the rest of the family not turning out the lights and leaving the hall lights on all day and night, so I covered up the light switches with plastic plates and put two motion sensors on the wall up high to turn on the lights. It works pretty good except for the problem with the sensor timing out and just switching off the lights on the occasions someone’s still in the hallway. A true presence sensor would solve that.

 

[PhotodudeCA]

Now make this device work on Matter instead of Zigbee and make it the cornerstone of an alarm system. The smart home universe is a royal mess with a bunch of incompatible brands, protocols, and standards. Ring/Amazon is too data-hungry and predatory, Nest/GoogleHome is a fine example how incompetent product managers and inter-organizational conflicts can drive an undisputed market leader into the ground, and HomeKit is a case study on that sometimes creating a framework and letting other people how to use it is not going to work. Matter was supposed to solve half of those ills, but so far it clearly has not.

 

[ignatius345]

So for applications like this, I find it's more effective to get a cheaper alternative like the Lutron Maestro Motion Sensor Switch.

This makes so much sense. Not everything needs to be networked! Where the use case supports it, I'd way rather have something that has zero reliance on a hub or a network of any kind, and will never need a firmware update.

Some of this smart home stuff, honestly starts to seem more like an exercise in expensive and fragile over-engineering, or maybe just a pricy hobby.