Comment by XorNot
3 years ago
I have a weirder utility for it: occupancy sensing in rooms.
If it can detect breathing of humans reliably, then it solves a huge problem in having home automation with automatic lighting - particularly in bathrooms. I've never had a decent bathroom occupancy sensor (they all end up wanting to detect fairly large motions) - the obvious solution is AI with a camera but for obvious reasons no, but if a couple of base stations can localize person positions to rooms in the house (and provide other services) then that kind of solves the whole issue!
Is there anything wrong with mechanical switches, beside the apparent (though negligible for me) improvement in comfort?
I grew up with a father who was obsessed with the idea that we were wasting electricity by accidentally leaving the lights on sometimes. As a result he's spent probably thousands in attempted energy saving devices which have all not worked and definitely would never save enough compared to the cost of them.
Which is why I think about these things despite this seemingly obvious solution.
And the fact that the guest bathroom when I visit his house still has no light switch but does have a cheap motion sensor which is annoying as hell.
There are a number of mmWave occupancy sensors that are more than capable of this. The biggest issue is the delay introduced in most smart home contexts by Zigbee and the hubs. Matter/Thread should help here.
Existing options: https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/best-mmwave-human-presenc...
The Aqara FP2 should be out in Q2 with Matter support and be a nice upgrade. It can segment a room into multiple spaces and detect 5 people.
"Please drink verification can to continue."