Some smart home automations really can feel like magic. Often, these automations take a lot of effort to set up, but there are some projects that you can set up in less than an hour that can have a big impact on your smart home.
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Smart lighting that follows your lead
An automation that feels like magic
Credit: Philips/Signify
One of the first smart home automations that people set up is a smart bulb that turns on when a motion detector is triggered. This automation feels like magic the first time you make it work. The trouble is that this automation quickly breaks down as soon as you try to make the lights turn off again when you leave the room. If you’re sitting still, the motion sensor can’t see you, and you’re plunged into darkness.
The idea of presence-based lighting is still a good one. This is a perfect example of what true smart home automation should be. Rather than having to control your lights with an app or a switch or by tapping a dashboard, your lights should act by themselves, turning on when you need them and turning off again when you don’t.
If you set up presence-based lighting in multiple rooms, you can even find yourself living in the future, like something out of the Apple TV hit show Severance. Your lights can turn on and off as you walk around your home, coming on when you enter a room and turning off in the room you’ve just left.
Gathering the gear
Two sensors are better than one
Credit: Everything Smart Technology
Setting up this kind of automated lighting with a motion sensor can be a real challenge, as motion sensors can’t tell when you’re in a room; they can only tell when you’re moving. With the right hardware, however, things become a lot easier.
Presence sensors can detect not just when you enter a room but also if you’re still in it. An mmWave sensor uses high-frequency radar to detect much smaller movements than a traditional PIR motion sensor can pick up. Some sensors can detect movements as small as the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe, which allows them to keep track of when a room is occupied, and even how many people are in it.
The downside of presence sensors is that they’re not as fast to react as PIR motion sensors can be. If you’re using a presence sensor to turn on your lights, there may be a small delay between entering the room and the light turning on.
The solution is to use both types of sensors. A PIR motion sensor can quickly detect when you enter a room and turn the lights on almost immediately, provided it’s been properly positioned. The presence sensor can then take over and keep track of whether you’re in the room or not, and keep the lights on until you leave, even if you’re sitting still.
Some sensors offer the best of both worlds and include both a PIR motion sensor and an mmWave presence sensor in the same device. For example, the Everything Presence One, Aqara FP300, and Meross MS605 all contain both mmWave and PIR sensors. You can then use a single sensor for your presence-based lighting.
Don’t leave yourself in the dark
Leave room for sensors to fail
With the right sensors, creating an automation to turn on the lights when you enter a room and turn off again when you leave is fairly trivial. When the PIR sensor detects motion, the automation turns the light on. When the presence sensor detects that the room is no longer occupied, the automation turns the light off.
For the most part, this automation should work fine. The PIR motion sensor will be quick to react, so your lights should turn on as soon as you enter the room. The mmWave sensor should continue to detect your presence in the room, so the lights will stay on. It’s only when you leave the room, and your presence is no longer detected, that the lights turn off again.
In practice, however, this automation may not always work perfectly. Sometimes mmWave sensors can lose track of you for a moment or two, and if you don’t take this into account, you may find that your lights suddenly turn off while you’re still in the room.
One solution is to build a short cooldown into your automation. Instead of having the lights turn off as soon as presence clears, you change the trigger so that the lights turn off once presence has been clear for a set amount of time, such as 30 seconds. If the sensor temporarily loses you, your lights will stay on as long as the sensor picks you up again within that 30-second window; the lights will then turn off 30 seconds after you leave the room.
True automation should work by itself
Set up properly, presence-based lighting really does feel like magic. You can add refinements such as detecting light levels so your lights don’t turn on when you don’t need them or using smooth transitions to let your lights fade in and out. Ultimately, you’ll end up with lighting that is always on when you need it, and always off when you don’t, and you can set it all up in under an hour.
