Occupancy Sensors For HA

[broconne]

How useful have people found occupancy sensors to be for home automation purposes? I am trying to cut down the cost of low voltage options on a new build. I have spec'd over $1000 ($40) each for
occupancy/motion sensors I had planned to use for HA.

I think they could still be useful in bathrooms (in conjunction with a door contact) to turn fans on, leave fans running after user etc. But I am starting to doubt their usefulness for turning lights in the kitchen when going down for a snack, etc.

Some real world feedback would be appreciated. Here is the locations I had originally planned for occupancy/motion sensors but I am now not sure I would use:

Bathroom #1
Bathroom #2
Bedroom #2
Bedroom #3
Bedroom #4
Breakfast
Deck
Den
Dining Room
Downstairs Bath
Driveway
Family Room
Front Porch
Game Room
Garage
Hallway
Hallway
Kitchen
Laundry Room
Mudroom
Owner's Bathroom
Owner's Suite
Sunroom

 

[mustangcoupe]

Actually the place I find it to be usefull is the kitchen.. when I have full hands and want to turn the light on as I enter the room....

$40 each sounds alittle steep to me.... what exactly does this include? are yo doing it yourself? what is the brain of your HA setup(what's getting these occupancy signals?

 

[personalt]

what about these? I never used these but they appear to be $7.00 each with flat rate shipping. I might consider buying one to test first but I thinky ou are in the right direction automating those rooms if you can. The value may not be in turning on kitchen light when you go in but turning it off when leave..




http://cgi.ebay.com/ADEMCO-HONEYWELL-AUROR...%3A1|240%3A1318

How useful have people found occupancy sensors to be for home automation purposes? I am trying to cut down the cost of low voltage options on a new build. I have spec'd over $1000 ($40) each for
occupancy/motion sensors I had planned to use for HA.

I think they could still be useful in bathrooms (in conjunction with a door contact) to turn fans on, leave fans running after user etc. But I am starting to doubt their usefulness for turning lights in the kitchen when going down for a snack, etc.

Some real world feedback would be appreciated. Here is the locations I had originally planned for occupancy/motion sensors but I am now not sure I would use:

Bathroom #1
Bathroom #2
Bedroom #2
Bedroom #3
Bedroom #4
Breakfast
Deck
Den
Dining Room
Downstairs Bath
Driveway
Family Room
Front Porch
Game Room
Garage
Hallway
Hallway
Kitchen
Laundry Room
Mudroom
Owner's Bathroom
Owner's Suite
Sunroom

 

[broconne]

Actually the place I find it to be usefull is the kitchen.. when I have full hands and want to turn the light on as I enter the room....

$40 each sounds alittle steep to me.... what exactly does this include? are yo doing it yourself? what is the brain of your HA setup(what's getting these occupancy signals?

Sorry - This was to pre-wire for an occupancy sensor. Does not include any sensor cost.

Wish I could do it myself - builder won't negotiate on that - course I don't go to contract till Tuesday

 

[broconne]

Actually the place I find it to be usefull is the kitchen.. when I have full hands and want to turn the light on as I enter the room....

$40 each sounds alittle steep to me.... what exactly does this include? are yo doing it yourself? what is the brain of your HA setup(what's getting these occupancy signals?

The kitchen might be useful - couldn't you also turn lights on in kitchen when the door to the garage opens? I guess the trick would be - when to turn them off.

I will be using an ELk-M1/ALC OnQ for lighting/maybe CQC down the road.

 

[IVB]

For me, occupancy is of ok value, what I like more is the closet doors being wired. That way I can turn on/off the closet light based on door open&close. Heck, even the wife likes that.

If it were me, i'd run all the pre-wire anyhow; you can never have too much wire in your house.

 

[broconne]

For me, occupancy is of ok value, what I like more is the closet doors being wired. That way I can turn on/off the closet light based on door open&close. Heck, even the wife likes that.

If it were me, i'd run all the pre-wire anyhow; you can never have too much wire in your house.

I agree - I am trying to get the low voltage bill down from $16k to $10k

 

[broconne]

For me, occupancy is of ok value, what I like more is the closet doors being wired. That way I can turn on/off the closet light based on door open&close. Heck, even the wife likes that.

If it were me, i'd run all the pre-wire anyhow; you can never have too much wire in your house.

IVB - What do you use additional occupancy/motion sensors for? I will have them at all entry points into the house for security purposes.

 

[ver0776]

Whether the occupancy sensors are usefull of not in a room like Kitchens or Living Rooms depends more on what the sensors are being hooked into rather than the sensors themselves. If you have other sensors also tied into an automation system, like Light Sensors, Door Sensors, Time of Day, Sunrise/Sunset Times, etc, then an occupancy sensor in EVERY room becomes very worthwhile.


If you have a good backend, then you start looking at things like "How many people live in the house", "How big are the pets", "How much does lighting conditions vary", "Are there small children that would be affected by the pet immunity", "How fast does the motion detector need to respond to turn the lights on fast enough", to determine the type of occupancy/motion detector to use.


My suggestion is even if you are doubtfull and may not put them everywhere, wire for them so you can change your mind and add them later if possible.


I just use cheap MS16A X10 detectors and using them in every room, sometimes 2 in a room, is very valuable to the overall system. These not only provide the occupancy detection but they also report Light/Dark so you can use that additional information to decide whether to turn the lights on, etc.


Vaughn
www.vcrib.com

 

[IVB]

For me, occupancy is of ok value, what I like more is the closet doors being wired. That way I can turn on/off the closet light based on door open&close. Heck, even the wife likes that.

If it were me, i'd run all the pre-wire anyhow; you can never have too much wire in your house.

IVB - What do you use additional occupancy/motion sensors for? I will have them at all entry points into the house for security purposes.

I have motions in every room of the house, except the bathrooms. I was running the wire myself, plus the Bosch sensors were only $22/each, so I went a little nutzoid.

At this point it's strictly to turn lights off after a period of time, our desired light-on patterns are too random to codify into a set of rules.

 

[broconne]

For me, occupancy is of ok value, what I like more is the closet doors being wired. That way I can turn on/off the closet light based on door open&close. Heck, even the wife likes that.

If it were me, i'd run all the pre-wire anyhow; you can never have too much wire in your house.

IVB - What do you use additional occupancy/motion sensors for? I will have them at all entry points into the house for security purposes.

I have motions in every room of the house, except the bathrooms. I was running the wire myself, plus the Bosch sensors were only $22/each, so I went a little nutzoid.

At this point it's strictly to turn lights off after a period of time, our desired light-on patterns are too random to codify into a set of rules.

Out of curiosity what rule do you use for lights in the kitchen?

Do you find it useful in the secondary bedrooms?

 

[mustangcoupe]

For me, occupancy is of ok value, what I like more is the closet doors being wired. That way I can turn on/off the closet light based on door open&close. Heck, even the wife likes that.

If it were me, i'd run all the pre-wire anyhow; you can never have too much wire in your house.

IVB - What do you use additional occupancy/motion sensors for? I will have them at all entry points into the house for security purposes.

I have motions in every room of the house, except the bathrooms. I was running the wire myself, plus the Bosch sensors were only $22/each, so I went a little nutzoid.

At this point it's strictly to turn lights off after a period of time, our desired light-on patterns are too random to codify into a set of rules.

Out of curiosity what rule do you use for lights in the kitchen?

Do you find it useful in the secondary bedrooms?

I use an M1G with the Bosch Blueline(I think) sensors

not exact wording but

if zone X is violated turn output XX on for 5 mins restart if running

 

[IVB]

My rule is similar but the opposite:

- If no motion for 30 mins, then turn light off.

Works fine, but it's making us lazy and not turning lights off as the system will do it for us, i'm not sure i like that...

 

[ver0776]

My rule is similar but the opposite:

- If no motion for 30 mins, then turn light off.

Works fine, but it's making us lazy and not turning lights off as the system will do it for us, i'm not sure i like that...

I don't know the average vacancy time people use, I remember Rupp saying 20 minutes for his bathroom a long time ago. He uses HS and you are on CQC, so do these systems support some kind of occupancy logic system or can you at least write scripts for that? The longest vacancy timer I use in my whole house is 4 minutes and my kitchen & bathrooms are set to 1 minute.

If I was going to go into the kitchen for 1-2 minutes to get a drink and the house left the lights on for 30 minutes, I would think that is the opposite of it saving me money and would rather turn the light off manually. I even feel bad when I sit on the couch looking at my lit up kitchen for 1 minute until it goes off, but working on that =)

And NO, my lights do not turn off on me. For a while there would be a situation here and there, but I slowly ironed all the issues out. So I am curious if those high timers you all use is due to lack of sensors, or something like the # of rules you can have in memory on an elk, or you just use the 30 minutes as a worst case automatic backup and don't bother refining the rules?

Maybe this should be another thread... oooh or a poll...


Vaughn

 

[IVB]

It's a parameter-driven thing, I could just as easily make it 1 minute as 30 minutes, and each room has its own timer. The shortest I'd feel comfortable setting it for is probably 20ish mins for the LivRm/bedrooms, in case someone is just sitting there reading. The closet is set to 15 mins.

Although you're right, I could put kitchen down to 1 minute, honestly I hadn't given it that much thought. Too much crap in the spare parts closet to install for the first time to go back and optimize other stuff