Can anyone recommend decent pet immune wired and wireless occupancy sensors? I have been wrestling with this for a few years now and it just clicked. I've been trying to use security motion sensors for home automation, and they are just too slow and unresponsive. And if you are relative still in a room, they will fail to realize that you are still in the room. So, thanks for reminding me of that.
Slight threadjack possibly, and if it detracts from the thread too much, I will start a new one.
So you either have to double up and use a PIR as well as a occupancy detector, or just use a PIR and have a light turned off on you occational because you were sitting still (reading a book, watching TV, etc). That is the real decision to make.
There is actually another solution if you look. A typical IR motion detector uses "fingers" to detect motions. These fingers are the detection areas of the motion detector. Imagine the motion detector is like a hand facing the room. When a burglar goes across the fingers, that trips the alarm. False alarms are prevented because most burglar alarm motion detectors require two or more fingers to be crossed. This makes motion detectors bad occupancy detectors.
The solution is a combo motion/occupancy detector. I don't know the model, but my Optex sensors can perform both functions. It contains an IR sensor AND a microwave detector. The microwave detector is most sensitive toward or away from the sensor, where the IR sensors are most sensitive across the sensor, as I just spoke about. These combo sensors have an additional connection to +12 V or 0 V to tell its its a motion sensor OR an occupancy sensor.
In motion mode, BOTH the IR and Microwave must be triggered to trigger the sensor. This prevents false alarms. In occupancy mode EITHER the IR OR the Microwave will trigger the sensor making it more sensitive. It takes an extra wire, but basically when my alarm is AWAY or VACATION, then the sensor is motion, otherwise occupancy. Again, I can't give you a model number, but these DO exist, and they cost slightly more, but they are worth it.
On motion or no motion, there is a solution there as well. Most recent panels have a crosszoning setting for each zone. Crosszoning means that the alarm will not be tripped with one zone, but rather a timer is started and if a second zone is tripped within the timer period, then alarm. If you have a bunch of motion detectors, this is the best way to go. Its pretty unlikely a burglar in my house wouldn't trip at least two motion detectors. And this avoids the false alarms caused by the occasional spider making its home in a sensor.
So you can use crosszoning to prevent false alarms and still use motion detectors for protection.