I bought the SONOFF Zigbee Human Presence Sensor SNZB-06P and using it in the hallway to switch on / off lights. In my use case scenario for the hallway it’s perfect for what i need. It turns the light on / off.
But for the living room it is not enough. I would prefer a multi-zone presence sensor here. So i can switch on/off different devices when i am in different zones.
This is not over or under kill. One should choose sensors depending on the situation and read descriptions before buying. If it is toilet/bathroom and you use it to have lights on while someone is there - sure you want to use a presence sensor. If you need to turn lights on movement outside for example, you should use movement sensors in general situations.
In one of the videos about smart homes at the LTT youtube channel few years ago Linus explained the difference.
I have two SNZB-06P in my living-room / kitchen area which I use in a few scenes (all implemented in node red):
I have a welcome scene that turn on the lights when I enter home (via living room) if we’re at night (sunset minus 45min), no presence was detected before (to rule out someone is already at the living room watching TV without lights) and all lights are off - then I turn on in cascade 3 B05 lights at 50% and a lightstrip behind the TV rack with 250ms delay each, and after everything is ON, the lightstrip goes to GREEN or RED for 2 seconds acording to the air quality in the room (via sonoff sensor)
Between 0 and 6am, if no presence is detected for 8 minutes all the lights in the living-room and kitchen turn off. Presence is checked during those 8 minutes, to rule out you left the room and came back, this resets the counter.
Between 0 and 6am, if you come back to the area and no lights are on, led strip and TX Ultimate ambient light go on to light your way. This is minimal light but you can see the fridge OK or get some water.
After 5:50 if no lights are ON and you go into the kitchen part (Second SNZB-06P detects presence and lux LOW) counter lights go ON, even if there is daylight, as this part of the kitchen is still dark on cloudy days.
If CO2 sensor goes way UP (to 1500+) instead of using the sensor’s alarm, if there is someone at the living room (vía SNZB-06P) lights and lightstrip go to red for 5 seconds and back to previous state, while the google home mini in that area prompts you to open the windows, using CAST node via Node-RED (I have a similar scene for my bedroom).
Control the backlight of the dashboard tablet for the living room via presence sensor (using the API included in fully kisosk browser). - NOT YET IMPLEMENTED
I also have another SNZB-06P in the main bedroom with similar scenes, there’s a welcome scene for the bedroom that runs at night, if no lights are already on, which also gets disabled via a virtual device called “sleeping” (ok google, turn on sleeping), that resets it state next morning at 10am.
I really like the concept of a presence sensor instead of a stardard motion sensor.
Wow, this is an amazing setup — thanks a lot for sharing in such detail!
Really like how you’re using presence detection instead of traditional motion logic, especially with the layered conditions (time, lux, occupancy history). The CO2-triggered lighting + voice prompt is also a very clever touch.
Out of curiosity:
Have you found the SNZB-06P stable enough for these automations over time?
And are you mainly relying on mmWave presence, or combining it with other sensors as well?
We’re always interested in how advanced users like you are building real-world scenarios — this kind of feedback is super valuable for us.
I have been using two SNZB-06P sensors for some time and think that they are great but they have two limitations. 1. They have only a short range. 2. Every few months mine lockup and need a reboot.
A plus that I have not seen spoken of here is that mine pickup a lot of zigbee relay clients and do a good job of strengthening my network. I think it is because, by the nature of the device, they are very exposed reducing interference.
Thanks for the follow up. I get almost no issues for my use cases, besides:
I have a nearby window close to one of the presence sensors, if I leave it open I get random presence detection which sometimes affects my welcome or all lights off scenes (thinks there is some one there). I’m about to install a door sensor on that window to rule out this condition (I would only use the other sensor)
Sometimes when aproching the kitchen sensor there’s a detection delay to turn on the light, it’s random and 1 out of 10 times or less.
Then I agree about what the last message said, you have to work with the detection range, that’s why I installed two sensors.
About your second question, I do use another sensor types, for example the welcome scene is actually triggered by a Snzb-04p door sensor, presence is checked in the flow (I have one big function node in node-red that checks everything at once, I do mirror lights and sensors states in flow or global variables).
You’d probably need a second esp32 (c6) to get it into eWeLink as a standard zigbee presence sensor. Then you could run automations if the heart rate is above 80 or something. The heart rate accuracy depends on placement a lot though. You have to put it above a bed or something. I had an idea to put it in my gym to turn on fans when my HR was above 95bpm but it doesn’t have the range.
