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I've had plenty of battery powered sensors in the past with Nest, Hue and Smartthings. They last over a year on battery and provide a month's notice when the battery goes low. No wondering and not much annoyance. The benefit is the ability to install them in places with no access to power, especially hallways or high ceilings. I have some installed 12' up that would be pretty ugly to run a cable to.

In this case, mm wave probably takes too much power to be battery powered so the tradeoff is better sensing but more limited placement.

In some circumstances you could use a concealed USB power bank if mains power isn't an option - which would certainly give you longer life than a CR32 battery, but no idea if the drain would be low enough to make it practical.
 
Picked up 2 yesterday with a coupon. Happy I did since they are now OOS. I have quite a few Aqara products and love them.
 
Sunlight is unrelated to cosmic radiation.
How many hairs are we going to split here? Do we receive cosmic radiation from the sun? Yes. Is UV light considered cosmic radiation? No. Are they all ionizing? Yes. Of those, the only detail that actually matters to the original point is whether they are ionizing or not. This is one why people get confused over ionizing vs. ionizing radiation, because every time the topic comes up a bunch of nerds jump in and start arguing about the different types of radiation and veer the topic into a massive tangent.
 
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Does this work without the app? I understand you would lose functionality but I don’t one another company sending my data abroad.
That’s what I’m worried about too, but I think it will be fine if you set it up initially in the app. It sounds like it passes pseudo motion sensors to the Home app so at that point I bet you could delete the app. Or ”restrict” the accessory with a HomeKit Router.
 
Honestly I'm still confused. Do you still need an Aquara hub or not? Are there certain features that require the hub? Will you need a hub to update the firmware?
 
How fast would this work for switching on lights when walking into a room if it's not thread enabled?
Thread hasn't got anything to do with speed. Wired will always be the fastest (and it's a shame this isn't POE enabled) but its' wifi - it's connection proticol isn't an issue, the technology it uses is more important but this is the first mmWave device that actives as fast as a PIR sensor.
 
I've had plenty of battery powered sensors in the past with Nest, Hue and Smartthings. They last over a year on battery and provide a month's notice when the battery goes low. No wondering and not much annoyance. The benefit is the ability to install them in places with no access to power, especially hallways or high ceilings. I have some installed 12' up that would be pretty ugly to run a cable to.

In this case, mm wave probably takes too much power to be battery powered so the tradeoff is better sensing but more limited placement.

But you should really install these professionally, with power, in ceilings.
 
Honestly I'm still confused. Do you still need an Aquara hub or not? Are there certain features that require the hub? Will you need a hub to update the firmware?
You don't need the hub - it's wifi connected, it doens't even connect to their hub.
 
Dont leave the windows open or the fan on. If this thing can detect breathing its going to freak out.

It's the movement of breathing, not the actual air.

You can teach it to ignore interfernce in a room too. I guess this write up doesn't mentioned that (i've not read it, I already own one)
 
Sunlight has UV rays which are ionizing. Why do you think we wear sunscreen?
UV rays are not ionizing. They cause damage through a different mechanism. They cause cancer through a non-ionizing mechanism.

As detailed below the energy required for ionization is significantly greater than carried in UV light. The energy of light is related to their wavelength and UV light is far down on the spectrum from ionizing "light".

 
How many hairs are we going to split here? Do we receive cosmic radiation from the sun? Yes. Is UV light considered cosmic radiation? No. Are they all ionizing? Yes. Of those, the only detail that actually matters to the original point is whether they are ionizing or not. This is one why people get confused over ionizing vs. ionizing radiation, because every time the topic comes up a bunch of nerds jump in and start arguing about the different types of radiation and veer the topic into a massive tangent.
I am a nerd.

They are not all ionizing. Only cosmic radiation is and it's a trivial and nearly unavoidable component of exposure when outside (sunscreen and clothes make no difference to it). So I guess people are getting the only detail that matters wrong and that is why it is confusing.
 
I am a nerd.

They are not all ionizing. Only cosmic radiation is and it's a trivial and nearly unavoidable component of exposure when outside (sunscreen and clothes make no difference to it). So I guess people are getting the only detail that matters wrong and that is why it is confusing.
There are also different types of UV rays, based on how much energy they have. Higher-energy UV rays are a form of ionizing radiation.
Source: American Cancer Society

But I will add that this entire distinction on UV rays is moot, since I'm pretty sure everyone understands that this device is not emitting UV rays or any sort. The original point was that the emissions from this device are non-ionizing and harmless. Quibbling over the difference between what constitutes cosmic rays or not is beside the point and only confuses matters.
 
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Very creepy.
Not in the slightest! Jesus Christ!!!
This is basically a fancier version of a motion sensor. Today you can buy basic motion sensor bulbs that use a changing pattern on an IR sensor for just a few bucks -- and if you have any common sense you use them all around the outside of your house, and possibly for various "appropriate" (like closets) locations inside your house.
You can also buy a fancier version of such a lightbulb which uses "radar" (ie this same mm wave technology) to the same ends of motion detection, but the radar version is more sensitive (ie works at longer ranges and works through things like thin walls or hedges) so it may be appropriate for certain locations on your property that are not easily triggered by a standard IR motion sensor.

The Aqara tech is basically the guts of such a light bulb hooked up to WiFi and a microcontroller that can talk HomeKit. It's as "threatening" as the motion sensor you already have in your bathroom (if it's a California bathroom built according to the code of the past few years).
 
It's nearly instant… Faster than any motion sensor I've used.
Let me ask a slightly different question which is: how well 'localized' is it? If I have it in a room, does it trigger when I walk past a wall of that room? When I walk past a doorway?

The reason I say this is that in my experience motion sensor lightbulbs based on this tech are extremely sensitive, even through windows and perhaps thin walls. In light bulbs this is not a downside -- it's the REASON you buy more expensive "radar" bulbs. But for occupancy detection you want to limit the sensitivity to basically bound a room.
 
I've had plenty of battery powered sensors in the past with Nest, Hue and Smartthings. They last over a year on battery and provide a month's notice when the battery goes low. No wondering and not much annoyance. The benefit is the ability to install them in places with no access to power, especially hallways or high ceilings. I have some installed 12' up that would be pretty ugly to run a cable to.

In this case, mm wave probably takes too much power to be battery powered so the tradeoff is better sensing but more limited placement.

Honestly I'd like to see combo bulbs that are both smart bulbs in the usual sense and have this sort of occupancy detection built in. This solves the power problem, and gives a nice high location for presence detection across the whole room.
Right now these things are, of course, charging what the market will bear, but there's no intrinsic reason why today's $20 ikea color bulb can't be tomorrow's $25 ikea color bulb with occupancy detection...
(Note that I mean, of course, occupancy detection that acts as a HomeKit sensor and thus can be used for automations. If all you want is bulbs that go on and off depending on whether people are present, you can buy a variety of those at Home Depot today.)
 
Picked up 2 yesterday with a coupon. Happy I did since they are now OOS. I have quite a few Aqara products and love them.

I wish I had ordered two, because the one I received today is a lemon. It never thinks nobody is present. I've re-set it up several times, moved it to different rooms, repositioned, etc. Only twice has it ever detected no occupancy. The light sensor works properly, yay.

I also have several Aqara products. This is my first lemon, and an especially disappointing one since they sold out so fast for now, and the discount has expired.
 
Or ”restrict” the accessory with a HomeKit Router
I’ve tried that, but then some of my accessories got weird and didn’t always work. I would get not connected errors. I wonder if the homekit restriction blocks network connections like some routers are able to do. Unfortunately, my router is not one of them so I can’t test. I can restrict access to the local network, but not the Internet.
 
Let me ask a slightly different question which is: how well 'localized' is it? If I have it in a room, does it trigger when I walk past a wall of that room? When I walk past a doorway?

The reason I say this is that in my experience motion sensor lightbulbs based on this tech are extremely sensitive, even through windows and perhaps thin walls. In light bulbs this is not a downside -- it's the REASON you buy more expensive "radar" bulbs. But for occupancy detection you want to limit the sensitivity to basically bound a room.
The Aqara app will let you map the room where the FP2 is in for you to set the edge (walls) and entrance/exits which can help mitigate the false triggers. I did exactly this because the FP2 can still detect through some of the thin plaster walls and see-through glass windows.

By mapping them properly—essentially telling the FP2 to disregard past the said windows and walls—it ends up working just as intended. This can be time consuming to do though as it also involves a deal of trial and error.
 
For sure they are great. I have the FP1s and i am very pleased with them and my other Aqara stuff. Apps like Home+ 6, Presence sensors and also Homebridge with some plugins for delay timers, dummy and logic switches improve Apple’s Homekit tremendously.
 
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