Review: Aqara's Presence Sensor FP2 Is a Unique, Ultra-Accurate HomeKit Accessory

[zengod]

Apple HomeKit ??? Is that even still a thing ?

 

[Verified Whiskey]

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.

That is, in fact, exactly what that function is for.

 

[Analog Kid]

Wow, I just did a walk through their website and Aqara has an interesting array of products. Not sure how I haven't noticed these guys before.

 

[BBuff]

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.

I had the exact same experience and returned mine.

 

[theinstructor]

Perfect addition to the NSA spy tools already in our homes.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

“The need for constant power via USB-C is virtually the only caveat to the FP2”

Well that and the whole Chinese company thing. Not sure I want to download an app from a company based in China. Sounds like some of the features can only be accessed with that….so that could be an issue for some people.

 

[leicaman]

So it's like having your own 5G radiation spytower in every room?
It sounds super cool but reading "radar" kinda makes me nervous about the amount of EMF bouncing around the house...

That kind of EMF is insignificant. There's more EMF continuously hitting you from solar wind than any device in your house will expose you to.

 

[leicaman]

The paranoia here is discouraging. I always thought Apple people were a cut above the average jamoke when it came to tech-savvyness.

My issue is how do I get it to turn the lights on when the light level is below 400 lux when it detects someone in the room, but not when nobody is there. HomeKit seems incapable of doing an if then this kind of automation. I guess I need a shortcut?

As for the paranoia, if you use HomeKit, all the automations are local to your house. If you use the Aqara app, at this time it is cloud-based.

 

[name99]

The paranoia here is discouraging. I always thought Apple people were a cut above the average jamoke when it came to tech-savvyness.

My issue is how do I get it to turn the lights on when the light level is below 400 lux when it detects someone in the room, but not when nobody is there. HomeKit seems incapable of doing an if then this kind of automation. I guess I need a shortcut?

As for the paranoia, if you use HomeKit, all the automations are local to your house. If you use the Aqara app, at this time it is cloud-based.

Your particular problem is fairly easily solved. HomeKit's underlying Automation language can handle what you want, but Home.app only exposes a subset of what the language can do. Other apps expose the full possibilities of the Automation language. One free option is Eve.app, which you can use even if you don't use any Eve accessories. Or you can pay a few dollars and get something like Home+ or Home Controller.

In Eve, for example, you would build such an automation by setting
- as the trigger, light level <400
- as a condition that also has to be true once the trigger fires, that there is presence in the room (which I assume you can track via a presence sensor or a motion detector)
- as the action, switch the light on

You may want to build a companion automation with a trigger than when a person leaves the room the action is to switch the light off.

One suggestion: build some automations in this obvious way I have described so you get a feel for how things work. But once you understand how they work, tear it all down and do it again!
The second time round, you don't EVER *directly* execute an action within an automation, instead for every action that you would like to execute, create a small scene that executes the action, and have the automation execute the scene. Name the scenes something that's expandable and makes sense, for example I have all my scenes start with a number and a letter, so something like
"2 c Bedroom Lights On", where 2 means lights, a/b/c etc are different scenes, then the name.
Naming this way will keep you sane. Using scenes instead of direct actions means everything works a lot smoother (in ways you will learn as you experiment) across different apps, and when you want to start adding features like more than one light in the room.

 

[leicaman]

Your particular problem is fairly easily solved. HomeKit's underlying Automation language can handle what you want, but Home.app only exposes a subset of what the language can do. Other apps expose the full possibilities of the Automation language. One free option is Eve.app, which you can use even if you don't use any Eve accessories. Or you can pay a few dollars and get something like Home+ or Home Controller.

In Eve, for example, you would build such an automation by setting
- as the trigger, light level <400
- as a condition that also has to be true once the trigger fires, that there is presence in the room (which I assume you can track via a presence sensor or a motion detector)
- as the action, switch the light on

You may want to build a companion automation with a trigger than when a person leaves the room the action is to switch the light off.

One suggestion: build some automations in this obvious way I have described so you get a feel for how things work. But once you understand how they work, tear it all down and do it again!
The second time round, you don't EVER *directly* execute an action within an automation, instead for every action that you would like to execute, create a small scene that executes the action, and have the automation execute the scene. Name the scenes something that's expandable and makes sense, for example I have all my scenes start with a number and a letter, so something like
"2 c Bedroom Lights On", where 2 means lights, a/b/c etc are different scenes, then the name.
Naming this way will keep you sane. Using scenes instead of direct actions means everything works a lot smoother (in ways you will learn as you experiment) across different apps, and when you want to start adding features like more than one light in the room.

Thank you for that reply. It confirms something I found elsewhere. An app called HomeControl which can help in automating things. You can even back up your automations with it, but it doesn't back up specific actions, but I can back up scenes. So I've already started to change to using scenes more. I'll give your suggestions a try.

 

[leicaman]

Perfect addition to the NSA spy tools already in our homes.

Yeah, they're spying on grandma for her knitting secrets.