February 12, 2025

I lately purchased an Aqara vibration sensor with the plan of affixing it to our eating room desk for the aim of organising a move in Homey such that if it’s nighttime and the desk is bumped or tapped wherever, the sunshine would flip ON and keep on for 10 minutes.

It didn’t actually work the best way that I hoped it will…

https://youtu.be/SiO59Ldyd8k

The vibration sensor isn’t as delicate as I hoped it could be. Because of this, to set off the move/automation that I arrange, somebody must faucet on the vibration sensor itself. To this point we haven’t been in a position to set off it by tapping wherever else on the desk.

I feel I’ll finally take away that vibration sensor from the eating room desk and use it for one thing else as an alternative. However for now, it’s nonetheless on the desk and it type of works, though it’s probably not any extra useful than simply utilizing a light-weight swap on the wall.

One other factor that didn’t actually work the best way that I hoped it would was that after vibration is detected, the sunshine comes on for 10 minutes and my thought was that if extra vibration was detected thereafter, the move would constantly re-trigger and the sunshine would keep on. Sadly, that additionally doesn’t appear to be the best way issues work.

So I might say the vibration sensor not being as delicate as I would really like it to be is a matter with the Aqara system, however the move not frequently re-triggering earlier than it ends is a matter with the Homey ecosystem.

What truly finally ends up occurring is that the move is triggered, the sunshine comes on after which after 10 minutes, the sunshine goes off.

If you’d like the sunshine again on, you’ll want to go and faucet the vibration sensor once more.

That’s not what I had in thoughts.

What I’ve bought in Homey for this move

I really like Homey, however I feel there must be some technique to frequently re-trigger issues to keep away from a scenario like this the place the sunshine turns off after which you’ll want to re-trigger the entire thing once more to get the sunshine on for one more 10 minutes.

The Aqara vibration sensor additionally looks like a very good product, it’s simply clearly not appropriate for this specific thought. Nonetheless, I feel it will be nice for one thing a bit of extra “excessive contact”, so I’m positive I’ll put it to work some place else in our house finally.

What’s up with Alexa?!

Alexa had an “fascinating” day lately. Often, Alexa is cooperative and responsive 90-95% of the time, however the different day, voice management didn’t work in any respect. Within the Alexa app, my Sonos Arc soundbar was displaying intermittently as “offline” regardless of having a “robust connection” within the Sonos app.

I used to be digging round on-line for proof of widespread issues with Alexa, however didn’t discover something.

The Sonos soundbar could be on-line, then offline and even when it was on-line, the entire thing was actually bizarre.

Anyway, maybe Alexa simply needed a time off work as a result of the subsequent day all the things was again to regular identical to we by no means skipped a beat.

I actually don’t know what to make of all that, however I hope it doesn’t make a behavior of occurring too typically!

I’m not getting a P2 movement sensor in any case

The shop that I ordered three extra Aqara T1 gentle bulbs and a P2 movement sensor messaged me and advised me that they couldn’t truly get me a P2, however requested if I might be comfortable with a P1 as an alternative.

After some temporary analysis, I made a decision that the P1 seems to be completely tremendous for my use case. From what I might see, the battery life is definitely longer on the P1 in comparison with the P2, which is nice. The opposite vital distinction appears like Matter assist for the P2, however I don’t significantly care as a result of I’ll be connecting the P1 to Homey with Zigbee.

The opposite factor that I seen is that within the Homey app, I can see the Aqara P1 listed as supported particularly, however I can’t see a particular point out of the P2.

Homey positively helps the Aqara P1 movement sensor.

All that to say, I’m getting the P1, not the P2.

I thought-about a presence sensor however determined that it was overkill for this specific use case. My plan is to make use of the movement sensor and three Aqara gentle bulbs within the exterior elevator foyer space. I don’t actually foresee any state of affairs the place an individual goes to be stationary in that space for greater than a minute, so a movement sensor will do exactly tremendous.

Till subsequent time, have a very good one.

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