It is interesting to compare the Home app with the Elgato Eve app and others. For example, Philips hue motion sensors have motion, light and temperature sensors. But in Home only motion is available for rules. But in Eve you can set a rule on temperature and light level. And also create rules with conditions. The rules are then visible in the Home app. Somewhat confusing. Also all 4 of my hue movement sensors are reporting very low light levels in Lux.
Hey Mark - This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for awhile, but I honestly don’t spend enough time in the various vendors apps to do a really good job so this would take some research time. :). Absolutely agree that the Elgato Eve is one of the best Free apps for configuring more advanced automations that don’t appear in the default Apple Native Home app. My go to app, which I’ve shown and mentioned many times I’m sure, is the Brutella 3rd Part Home app which has all the advanced capabilities of the Elgato Eve for creating automations on just about any attribute that gets exposed by an accessory in homekit. It’s expensive, but it’s been worth it for me.
Hello, thanks for the review. Does this also work as occupancy sensor? I want to use this in my kitchen and I have a hue Sensor. It does the job to turn on when there is motion and turns off every time there is no motion, which is annoying. I want something which says it turns off after x minutes of no motion. Do you know of any product? How does the product justify almost double the cost compared to Hue?
Hey Ashwin! So I can’t comment at all on pricing, other than to say when you factor in the cost of the Hue bridge requiredfor the Hue motion sensor it may balance out. This is definitely a challenge right now. I’m digging into this question with hue and the question comes down to how long the motion sensor takes to “reset” itself. For instance the Ecobee sensors (more occupancy than motion TBH ) take 30 minutes or so to move back into an untriggeeed state. Might be that a conditional automation could solve this as well. I need to do some testing in this to figure it out. It’s something that SHOULD be easy, but just isn’t currently.
Thank You, Chris. The only device which currently works for me as occupancy sensor is the ecobee switch +, but I can’t use that in my kitchen coz of the placement. Hue has the option in the hue app to turn off after x minutes of no motion, but not in the HomeKit and I use hue sensor for non-hue bulbs. Do you know if Elgato sensors work as occupancy sensors?
Eve elgato don’t work as occupancy sensors. I reached out to Hue to see how long their sensors will take before sending another motion event but they won’t share the data. You might be able to use the “turn off after X minutes “ in the automations and then bump up the amount of time until it no longer turns off as you move around. Not ideal for sure. I might try and find some time to experiment with the Hue sensors to see if I can reverse engineer the sensor timeout. If you happen to do the same and find something that works please share with the data!
How is the response time compared to the Elgato motion? I'm assuming about the same since they are both bluetooth. Also I was curious about your apple tv showing up as a item in your upstairs, does it have any options in details?
Hey Jon - The response time is actually a little slower than the Elgato to be honest. Probably on par with the original firmware on the Elgato Motion sensor before they updated for the new bluetooth support we got in iOS 11 when it was first released. For the AppleTV, this was a brief period where I was running the iOS 11.3 beta on my Apple TV’s. It didn’t let me do anything with it though. No options at all. I believe this has something to do with the Airplay2 possibly, but hard to be sure. I’ve heard that it’s back with the iOS 11.4 betas currently floating around. Might be we get something exciting soon!
Hi, please help. I cannot setup my Fibaro motion sensor with Apple homekit. What I want is that when there is a motion in the kitchen the light goes on only when the light is below 10 lux. I try to set it up in the Fibaro app but it does not work. Looks easy but does not work. In the homekit I cannot find an option to do this setup. Please help, thanks Les
Hey Les! Thanks for the question! Before we get started; I haven't setup the LUX specifically with the Fibaro motion sensor so I'm trying to think this through on the fly. :) You are 100% correct that this is not going to be exposed in the Apple Home app. For some unknown reasons, Apple has chosen to restrict the capabilities of the Apple Home app so that you can't access a bunch of accessory characteristics. One of the best free options you might want to try to use to set this up is the Eve Systems app. It's probably the best *free* app for setting up more complex automations. The other option is the 3rd party Home app ( hochgatterer.me/home/ ) which I use extensively. It's not cheap, but it does allow you to better understand how the flow of these automations are going to work.
I really like your video and found it very informative. I gotta say that this device is very cool but I don’t think I would want an eye staring at me in a bathroom, that would be extremely creepy. Most people my mistake that for a camera. Lol
LOL I honestly never thought about that but you’re totally right! I’ll have to switch out this motion sensor for one that doesn’t watch me when I pee. :P
when do the eye blinks green, orange or red? Is this adjustable in the Febaro app or in HomeKit?
To the best of my knowledge, there’s no way to be able to control the light color at all. Sorry!
It is interesting to compare the Home app with the Elgato Eve app and others. For example, Philips hue motion sensors have motion, light and temperature sensors. But in Home only motion is available for rules. But in Eve you can set a rule on temperature and light level. And also create rules with conditions. The rules are then visible in the Home app. Somewhat confusing.
Also all 4 of my hue movement sensors are reporting very low light levels in Lux.
Hey Mark - This is something I’ve been thinking about doing for awhile, but I honestly don’t spend enough time in the various vendors apps to do a really good job so this would take some research time. :). Absolutely agree that the Elgato Eve is one of the best Free apps for configuring more advanced automations that don’t appear in the default Apple Native Home app. My go to app, which I’ve shown and mentioned many times I’m sure, is the Brutella 3rd Part Home app which has all the advanced capabilities of the Elgato Eve for creating automations on just about any attribute that gets exposed by an accessory in homekit. It’s expensive, but it’s been worth it for me.
Hello, thanks for the review. Does this also work as occupancy sensor? I want to use this in my kitchen and I have a hue Sensor. It does the job to turn on when there is motion and turns off every time there is no motion, which is annoying. I want something which says it turns off after x minutes of no motion. Do you know of any product? How does the product justify almost double the cost compared to Hue?
Hey Ashwin! So I can’t comment at all on pricing, other than to say when you factor in the cost of the Hue bridge requiredfor the Hue motion sensor it may balance out. This is definitely a challenge right now. I’m digging into this question with hue and the question comes down to how long the motion sensor takes to “reset” itself. For instance the Ecobee sensors (more occupancy than motion TBH ) take 30 minutes or so to move back into an untriggeeed state. Might be that a conditional automation could solve this as well. I need to do some testing in this to figure it out. It’s something that SHOULD be easy, but just isn’t currently.
Thank You, Chris. The only device which currently works for me as occupancy sensor is the ecobee switch +, but I can’t use that in my kitchen coz of the placement. Hue has the option in the hue app to turn off after x minutes of no motion, but not in the HomeKit and I use hue sensor for non-hue bulbs. Do you know if Elgato sensors work as occupancy sensors?
Eve elgato don’t work as occupancy sensors. I reached out to Hue to see how long their sensors will take before sending another motion event but they won’t share the data. You might be able to use the “turn off after X minutes “ in the automations and then bump up the amount of time until it no longer turns off as you move around. Not ideal for sure. I might try and find some time to experiment with the Hue sensors to see if I can reverse engineer the sensor timeout. If you happen to do the same and find something that works please share with the data!
Thank you, Chris. Yes, I will play around with some options and will keep you posted
How is the response time compared to the Elgato motion? I'm assuming about the same since they are both bluetooth. Also I was curious about your apple tv showing up as a item in your upstairs, does it have any options in details?
Hey Jon - The response time is actually a little slower than the Elgato to be honest. Probably on par with the original firmware on the Elgato Motion sensor before they updated for the new bluetooth support we got in iOS 11 when it was first released. For the AppleTV, this was a brief period where I was running the iOS 11.3 beta on my Apple TV’s. It didn’t let me do anything with it though. No options at all. I believe this has something to do with the Airplay2 possibly, but hard to be sure. I’ve heard that it’s back with the iOS 11.4 betas currently floating around. Might be we get something exciting soon!
Hi, please help. I cannot setup my Fibaro motion sensor with Apple homekit.
What I want is that when there is a motion in the kitchen the light goes on only when the light is below 10 lux. I try to set it up in the Fibaro app but it does not work. Looks easy but does not work.
In the homekit I cannot find an option to do this setup. Please help, thanks Les
Hey Les! Thanks for the question! Before we get started; I haven't setup the LUX specifically with the Fibaro motion sensor so I'm trying to think this through on the fly. :) You are 100% correct that this is not going to be exposed in the Apple Home app. For some unknown reasons, Apple has chosen to restrict the capabilities of the Apple Home app so that you can't access a bunch of accessory characteristics. One of the best free options you might want to try to use to set this up is the Eve Systems app. It's probably the best *free* app for setting up more complex automations. The other option is the 3rd party Home app ( hochgatterer.me/home/ ) which I use extensively. It's not cheap, but it does allow you to better understand how the flow of these automations are going to work.
I really like your video and found it very informative. I gotta say that this device is very cool but I don’t think I would want an eye staring at me in a bathroom, that would be extremely creepy. Most people my mistake that for a camera. Lol
LOL I honestly never thought about that but you’re totally right! I’ll have to switch out this motion sensor for one that doesn’t watch me when I pee. :P