RE: HA Holy Grail #1: Occupancy Detection

["Malcolm Surgenor" <malcolm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andy

Not sure if this is what you're looking for but I reckon I have
"reasonably
reliable occupancy detection" in my house.  Each room (and externals
such as
garage, driveway, etc) has it's own occupancy sensor (some rooms have more
than one) and at any time I can tell if a "space" is occupied or
not, how
long ago the last movement in that space was and how long it was
continuously occupied or vacant before that.  All of this data is logged
such that I can compare movement in each space - i.e. I can see that our
kitchen is the most used room in the house and the spare bedroom the least.
The occupancy sensors also (in most cases) have dusk / dawn sensors which
whilst they are not so reliable do give a pretty good indication of light
levels in a room - data which can be useful.

You're welcome to have a look at  <http://217.155.28.94:8080/>
http://217.155.28.94:8080/ - please
don't all rush at once!  The login id
and password are the usual HomeSeer ones of "guest" - for both. 
Pick a room
- the Spare Bedroom is probably a good starting point.

In terms of response - i.e. from movement detected to HomeSeer turning a
light on (for example), I don't really have a problem with speed - it seems
as fast to me as the commercial set up in my work's office (built Dec
2005).

All the PIRs are just X10 motion sensors - nearly all US spec - that talk
back to the HomeSeer via a
<http://board.homeseer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=705>
WGL Designs W800 RF
Receiver  with a modified (large) antenna to gain full house coverage.  The
interface between the W800 and HomeSeer is a piece of software (plug-in) -
<http://board.homeseer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=778>
ACRF Processor . Both of
these have support forums on the HomeSeer support board at
http://board.homeseer.com/  The
beauty of the ACRF Processor is that it
supports multiple interfaces as I also use RFXCOM's equivalent of the W800
but this time for RF temperature sensors.   I've also had a look at using
RFID with this set up but couldn't really square the bang for buck.

Once HomeSeer has received the signal indicating motion another plug-in
(Doo-Motion) handles the resulting action. Doo-Motion, for me, is a
fantastic piece of software - both the inbuilt functionality and the
flexibility to add your own code/scripts is excellent.  It's Doo-Motion
that
gets HomeSeer to send the command to the light to turn on. Most of these
are
ZWave controlled but I still have one or two X10 controlled.  After that
Doo-Motion will 'automatically' remember to turn the light off again after
a
pre-set amount of time (if no further motion).  It's Doo-Motion that also
determines room/space occupancy and captures all the occupancy data.  I
also
have virtual occupancy detectors which HS sets determined by the state of
other X10 PIRs - for example if all are 'silent' for a pre-set amount of
time then I can assume the whole house is empty and start getting HomeSeer
to do other things - i.e. make the house 'look' as if it's occupied! :-)
I've no interface to the house alarm at present though.

Does any of that help?

Malcolm

Malcolm Surgenor
http://www.surgenor.net



_____

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Andy Laurence
Sent: 22 August 2006 09:49
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] HA Holy Grail #1: Occupancy Detection



I've finally puched down all the CAT5 in Node0, so it's time to think about
lighting. I've got the switches and lighting controllers sorted, but what
I'd really like is automgic lights. This leads me in pursuit of the holy
grail. Occupancy detection. Has anyone got a reasonably reliable method of
occupancy detection? I'm thinking a sensitive PIR, which triggers a timer
and turns the light on. When the timer reaches zero the light goes off.
Whenever the PIR is triggered, it resets the timer. I suspect I can do this
with xAP Floorplan, although I've not checked yet. Has anyone implemented
this? If so, any recommendations for PIRs?

Cheers,
Andy





This message was checked by MailScan for WorkgroupMail.
www.workgroupmail.com

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]