You would need heart rate tracking for proper multi person tracking using these style of sensor. Sadly because they are basically radar systems, dense objects and water containing things (people!) tend to obfuscate items that are behind other things.
Translation the water in our bodies is dense enough the radar cannot see through us to what is behind us in the normal tracking modes. Heartbeat monitoring is looking for specific pulses in patterns and is much better for knowing how many people are in the room.
Sadly it doesn’t appear as though the firmware on these supports the heartrate monitoring capabilities yet, so your best bet will likely be using the triggers for approaching occupied and leaving to determine your Prescence and track number of people in the room.
Note to self: check on the esp and other homebrew solutions and see if they finished ironing out the heartbeat and other algorithms yet
Follow-up on my FP2 integration. Things have gotten better, but the system still loses a person at night. I’ve integrated a new zone that doesn’t let the mode change unless the zone outside of the bed has presence, but I find my dog sleeping down there. And it sees her. So I’ll shrink the zone and create an additional for her presence on the floor by the air vent. I think I’m almost there. I’m not frustrated with it. Still intrigued. This is supposed to be able to do much more than this. I’m looking forward to those improvements. More to come.
I’ve read elsewhere about others having more issues, so nice to hear you have had some wins, without too much effort on my part Hopefully being dog-free at the moment (for me) will also help…
I like to be creative. “Walk around it” if it gets in your way. With Node-RED on my side, I’m sure I’ll get it figured out. Fail, but don’t quit.
If you’re looking for flows or input, hit me up. Together, we can conquer.
If I can make a late night request it would be for GIF images allowing me to make reference to Star Wars… If I can’t, so be it… My take on things is there are more important people in the world doing without what they need to people like me… So any impediment I face is… Just get over it…
Follow up on my FP2.
I don’t like it.
They’re updating the firmware regularly, but I’m constantly dealing with ghosting. I’d say that I reset the presence and “re-teach” it every morning so that my automations work. Very disappointing considering the price point on this thing. Having messed with the radar technology in some diy situations, I’m very disappointed as I’m aware of what it should be able to do. If you haven’t purchased one. Wait. I’ll post again if it improves.
I’ve been a bit slower in my uptake of the use of my FP2’s… I have one in my Living Room that covers most of my Living, Dining and Kitchen areas, plus I have a second in my Study / second bedroom. My lighting is still controlled elsewhere, so have the FP2’s “paired” to HA on Core and then integrated with my lighting hub. So far (the last couple of weeks) I have only used the FP2’s to keep the lights on, rather than triggering them to turn on, leaving that to my Hue PIR sensors. I suspect, now, that the triggering with the FP2’s would be less problematic than the effect of ghosts on prolonging lights to remain on, in my setup.
Given I am only a few weeks into actively using these for impacting my lighting, I’m willing to cut them some slack, but I expect I am experiencing a similar impact, just that I may have a few less ghosts haunting my home I’ll keep flagging the hotspots and see if things improve.
My take, at this stage, would be that yes, not a super-reliable sensor for your average user or someone who wants / needs something that “just works”, so certainly from a “I work for OLL, do I recommend this?”, I can certainly understand not wanting to commit, or even, based on your experience, just a general user recommending a product, I can also understand that perspective as well…
For those that like to play with new tech and are willing to forgo the $$ and the inconvenience that can come with such devices, then I would suggest it is still “interesting”… But it is hard to say, hand on heart, go out and buy this… Which is a shame…
Sorry, meant to mention this. I updated yesterday and have still been seeing ghosts, even in interference source areas. Hopefully it will eventually get the message…
Grabbed a couple myself. For that price, the lack of features doesn’t bother me. Anyone seen any reporting on these Sonoff sensors, specifically wrt ghosting?
I’m gonna admit that after the update, ghosting has lessened, but it’s still annoying to have to re-teach this thing. Even if every other day now. I’m glad I only want zone detection in one place. Way too expensive for the half-assed job it’s doing. But it’s better than nothing.
I did order up a couple of the Sonoff ones from ITEAD. Awaiting arrival. Can’t pass up 14$ per.
Hopefully being dog-free at the moment (for me) will also help…