Philips recently released a motion detector for their Hue smart lighting system. Now that there's a few Hue bulbs in various rooms of the house, I thought I'd try a motion sensor out to see if there's an actual use case that makes sense in reality.
The motion sensor itself is pretty small (5x5cm) and some thought has been put into the mount to make it pretty flexible. You can freestand it, or screw the supplied 'mount' to something like a wall. The mount is magnetic, so you can re-position or remove the sensor at will.
Finding and configuring the sensor is pretty much the same process as for a new bulb. There are 3 main configurable parameters for the sensor; how sensitive it is to motion; how dark it needs to get before the sensor becomes active; and what times separate 'night' from 'day'. This final parameter lets you split the day into two, and assign different lighting schemes to each. For example, a basic Hue White bulb supports schemes for fully on, dimmed, and nightlight, so you could go for fully on during the day, and dimmed during the night.
As a home worker the first use case we tried was in our home office. We stood the sensor on the desktop, and linked it to the desktop lamp and ceiling light. We configured both night and day to turn these lights fully on, and turn both off after 5 minutes of no motion detected. So whenever someone comes into the room the lights come on, and then they go off again when the room is unoccupied.
This use case almost works. I go into the office in the morning while it is still dark outside, and the lights come on. I work there all day, and a few minutes after I leave in the evening the lights go off again. The problem is, when I leave the room to go and have lunch, the lights stay on. This is because the ambient lighting has increased, and that deactivates the motion sensor. You can configure the sensor so that even on the brightest of days it will never deactivate, but that misses out on an opportunity.
What would be fantastic, certainly at this time of year, is to be able to trigger a scheme as the ambient lighting conditions pass the on/off threshold. We could then turn the ceiling light off as the dark morning transitioned into full daylight, and back on again in the afternoon as the night draws in. On a positive note, this is only a software update, so maybe in time it will come.
The second use case we've tried is in the hallway. I mounted the sensor above the front door, and tied the sensor into the hallway lights. We've set a far shorter period for no motion, and the hallway is a more transitory space in the house than the office, so the chances of the lights being on just as the sensor is deactivated by ambient light is very slim. This use case works very well. No need to fumble for the light switch when coming downstairs half asleep in the morning, and when returning from an evening out it is nice to be welcomed home automatically.
Currently the motion sensors are £35 from Amazon, so certainly not cheap enough to blitz the house with them. But we'll probably get a second sensor for use in the kitchen, as the use case there is the same as the hallway. Hopefully there'll be a software update from Philips at some point, and it'll be worth putting one back in the office.
The motion sensor itself is pretty small (5x5cm) and some thought has been put into the mount to make it pretty flexible. You can freestand it, or screw the supplied 'mount' to something like a wall. The mount is magnetic, so you can re-position or remove the sensor at will.
Finding and configuring the sensor is pretty much the same process as for a new bulb. There are 3 main configurable parameters for the sensor; how sensitive it is to motion; how dark it needs to get before the sensor becomes active; and what times separate 'night' from 'day'. This final parameter lets you split the day into two, and assign different lighting schemes to each. For example, a basic Hue White bulb supports schemes for fully on, dimmed, and nightlight, so you could go for fully on during the day, and dimmed during the night.
As a home worker the first use case we tried was in our home office. We stood the sensor on the desktop, and linked it to the desktop lamp and ceiling light. We configured both night and day to turn these lights fully on, and turn both off after 5 minutes of no motion detected. So whenever someone comes into the room the lights come on, and then they go off again when the room is unoccupied.
This use case almost works. I go into the office in the morning while it is still dark outside, and the lights come on. I work there all day, and a few minutes after I leave in the evening the lights go off again. The problem is, when I leave the room to go and have lunch, the lights stay on. This is because the ambient lighting has increased, and that deactivates the motion sensor. You can configure the sensor so that even on the brightest of days it will never deactivate, but that misses out on an opportunity.
What would be fantastic, certainly at this time of year, is to be able to trigger a scheme as the ambient lighting conditions pass the on/off threshold. We could then turn the ceiling light off as the dark morning transitioned into full daylight, and back on again in the afternoon as the night draws in. On a positive note, this is only a software update, so maybe in time it will come.
The second use case we've tried is in the hallway. I mounted the sensor above the front door, and tied the sensor into the hallway lights. We've set a far shorter period for no motion, and the hallway is a more transitory space in the house than the office, so the chances of the lights being on just as the sensor is deactivated by ambient light is very slim. This use case works very well. No need to fumble for the light switch when coming downstairs half asleep in the morning, and when returning from an evening out it is nice to be welcomed home automatically.
Currently the motion sensors are £35 from Amazon, so certainly not cheap enough to blitz the house with them. But we'll probably get a second sensor for use in the kitchen, as the use case there is the same as the hallway. Hopefully there'll be a software update from Philips at some point, and it'll be worth putting one back in the office.
