Light activated by a motion detector

[ver0776]

I find that almost every room I have requires different logic. Some rooms like the bathrooms have very tight logic that works almost flawlessly. The other extremes like my main room, I don't not attempt to control lighting. The kitchen, because it does not have a door, for example, can not use the same logic as a bed room or bathroom, but the fridge, stove, dishwasher, lights and 2 motion detectors all update a single occupancy timer, so any activity helps keep the room occupied.

I would never tie anything to a motion off event. I have motion off completely filtered out. If you are in a bathroom and the door is closed, motion off is irrelevant as you simply could not have gotten out.... So my bathroom has a normal vacancy timer set to 1 minute. If you go in and close the door, the vacancy timer is adjusted to 25 minutes. If you don't trigger motion in 25 minutes, you are dead or tricked it and closed the door from the outside. Once the door opens again, the vacancy timer is set to expire in 1 minute again. 1 Minute seems short, but any activity resets it, so it works nice. My longest occupancy timer in the house is 4 minutes.

So with being able to use additional sensors, you can have much better logic. Let say you go into your living room, the timer to turn the lights off is engaged at 4 minutes, but if the TV is on, it is set to 40 minutes... when the TV goes off, it is changed to 4 minutes again... You should be able to change the timers according to many conditions.

Again, I am not sure if you can do any of this with Variables and timers in ELK... No one with an Elk has tryied my software so I don't know if they play together either, but pehaps you could use something outside of Elk to handle the occupancy logic and just tell the Elk when to turn stuff on and off, or let the Elk just monitor... My 0.0.5.3 release is pretty stable if you wanna try its occupancy system.

Sorry if OT, I love occupancy tracking though!!!!

Vaughn

 

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I find that almost every room I have requires different logic.
...

Vaughn,
You're spot on with that conclusion! Determining a room's occupancy is not a simple undertaking and basing it on one motion detector is overly simplistic. My example works for my basement, because it is visited briefly and infrequently. As you explained, each room presents its own set of challenges.

The MisterHouse community has attempted to address this problem by creating "smart" objects (Base_Item, Light_Item, Motion_Item, Door_Item, Photocell_Item, Light_Restriction, Presence_Monitor, Occupancy_Monitor) that, when used together, define the complex interactions that occur in a room. The Occupancy_Monitor object must be aware of a room's geometry (the location of the doors and adjoining rooms) and uses the Presence and Motion objects to count the number of people entering/exiting a room. The idea is if the room is known to be occupied then there is no longer any need to detect continuous movement.

I haven't used these advanced objects yet ... at the moment I'm working on stitching together MisterHouse and my M1 using ELKM1::Control.

Taras

 

[CollinR]

If you get those previsouly mentioned dual tech motions and set it to max sensitivity very very small movements will trigger it. As you have mass you will keep the microwave side almost pegged once it sees the IR move it'll trip almost instantly. It's more a matter of location, in a living room above the TV would work well as anytime you shifted or grabbed the remote it would trip.

If you have a higher level multimedia system you can also extend timers based on functions of the that system too. While actively playing a DVD the lights stay for min of 2 hours. I already have the lights dim when I start watching anything and brighten when I stop/pauses/mutes.

Unfortunately my house does not lend itself well to retrofit wiring in some areas without some pretty major reconstruction. So I don't think I will be totally automating the lights for a little while.


You can also bust out the old pressure mats, should work will in small rooms like laundry and bath.