The Weirdest Automation I've Done with Aqara P2!

[@jpileggi1]

FYI…When you mentioned that the Apple Home app wasn’t adequate to create the automation you needed for the P2, I thought about an alternative app for Apple Home…the Controller app. This app exposes device attributes not accessible in Apple’s HomeKit App and is much more robust when doing automations. The Controller app raises the bar allowing more advanced automations. On behalf of us HomeKit users, Thank you for giving this automation the old college try. I’d be curious to see if the Controller app gives you Aqara app capabilities to create the automation that will work in HomeKit.

[@RyanAEdwards]

Hey! love your videos. This kind of automation is made cakewalk with HA and a mmWave sensor. Before mmWave, wasp in a box was a neat concept in theory that always had mixed results, IMO. Now with mmWave what you are trying to do can all be done in one easy automation. Only real downside is most of those sensors require a power outlet, whereas the battery powered P2 is more flexible in where you can place it.

[@explosiveenterprises1479]

Also ceiling fans with some mm wave sensors

[@technithusiast]

Glad you enjoyed the video! You are absolutely correct! mmWave is one of the best sensors for this and I’ve had great success with it. And as you called out, it’s limited by its power consumption which makes the P2 more flexible. This video was my chance to explore ways to make automated lighting with PIR sensors more robust and less prone to leaving people in the dark 😁

[@frankmthompson]

Bring in Florida and ceiling fans being a fact of life, mmwave sensors have gone from the holy Grail to just another sensor I have problems getting to work how I want them to. I've only just started with mmwave so I'm hoping I can tweak the settings to get them to work (so far played with the aqara fp2 and the everything presence one sensor)

[@Reepah]

Thanks for another great video! I've had similar issues with our bathrooms when using the bath or shower due to glass or lack of motion. We solved it using humidity sensors, and a derivative helper from this value in HA. Essentially the humidity sensor is watching for an acceleration in humidity above normal thresholds to enable a "Spa mode", lights stay on for this time in a particular scene and the motion sensor is disabled. When deceleration in humidity is detected spa mode is disabled. We also have a fallback to disable spa mode 1 hour after being set to account for lingering humidity in the summer, though the automatic fan extractor seems to counteract this enough to not be needed.

[@technithusiast]

I like it! How does it work for other situations that don’t involve the shower/humidity?

[@Reepah]

@@technithusiast Thanks! I default those rooms to standard pir motion detection on high sensitivity. 5 minute detection cooloff during the daytime, 2 minutes at nighttime. Lux metering in the room and time of day determines the scene used. Positioning for the motion sensor covers the whole room with exception of the shower and bath so humidity covers those edge cases nicely.

[@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs]

I would personally do this very differently. I use the rough method the SwitchBot contact/motion sensor does. I only turn the light off when the door is closed and then no motion is detected after waiting the timeout of the motion sensor. If motion is detected after the door is closed and the timeout is reached it just stays on indefinitely.

[@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs]

Oh and only turn the light on when the door is opened. And shortcuts style automations are slowwww sadly.

[@technithusiast]

Pretty straightforward 👌🏾 If the light would stay on Indefinitely, what makes it different than manually turning on the light?

[@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs]

@@technithusiast I’ve actually never seen the term wasp in a box before so I may be misunderstanding. But if you go in and close the door behind you (or at least always close the door when you leave), you’ve just got to work out if the wasp is still in there once when the door is closed. So on door close, wait the motion timeout and decide then whether to turn off the light if the wasp is still inside.

[@HomeIsWhereTheSmartIs]

I use this method on all my bedrooms. Turn light on when the door is opened. When the door is closed wait 30s (motion timeout) if motion is NOT detected turn off the light, because if someone was in there it still show motion at that moment.

[@technithusiast]

Yup your understanding seems correct! If the door is closed and movement is detected afterwards lights stay on until the door is opened again at which point the light will turn off after no movement is seen after some time

[@frankmthompson]

I've always appreciated the concept of WIAB, but I've never been able to successfully get it implemented. I've always run into motion sensor issues and how they report. So in a bathroom someone would often "sit" and the sensor's timeout was too long.* * The way I implemented it in the past was to say if there was motion in the room after the door was closed, the wasp must be in the box, so turn off any automatic lights until the door was opened again.

[@technithusiast]

Precisely! Aqara’s app allowed me to do exactly that and I find that WIAB works well 99% of the time. The only time I see it fail is if someone walks into the bathroom while someone is showering. After they leave the motion sensor needs to register movement once again to keep the lights on. But I’m ok with that.

[@frankmthompson]

@@technithusiast I'll have to look into aqara then for that type of automation I like keeping everything in HA though I've not tried the WIAB since moving from Homeseer. I honestly think it's always been a sensor issue, not a logic issue.

[@technithusiast]

I get how you feel about keeping everything in 1 ecosystem. I’m working on a home assistant version of WIAB so stay tuned.

[@kennymurphy4493]

The new aqara m3 hub will be released very soon and it supports thread and matter.

[@technithusiast]

Yup I have my eye on it 👀

[@vilhalmer]

That ghost problem is something I experience with the Everything Presence Lite as well, I even made a graph of it in Home Assistant just for fun. Not much to do about it that I can figure, since adding a debounce delay makes the lighting frustrating. Another possibility to explore in Home Assistant: I recently extended presence detection into a room with only one door that my sensor can't quite see into. I implemented a finite state machine, so it can figure out I'm still in the room based on the order in which I pass through the two zones it can see. I use an input_select to represent which state it's in, and have a single automation with a choose action that moves between states. So far it's working about 99% accurately, I have it set up to send me a notification when it hits an unexpected state transition so I can try to debug with traces.

[@technithusiast]

Yup I still get ghosting problems occasionally with FP2. I’m planning on exploring and posting a home assistant version of wasp in a box along. Your state machine version sounds very robust. I don’t know your setup or details around your use case but how well does it work with more than one person in a space? I find state machines become exponentially more complicated when you have to track more than one variable.

[@vilhalmer]

Ah indeed I live alone so I don't have to worry about triggering things out of order with multiple people. I don't think the EPL would be accurate enough to handle it despite ostensibly supporting multiple targets, I regularly become target 2 by accident.

[@RealLeadership]

Cool! This might fix the rooms that are not important enough to have a radar. I would be cool if you could post a node-red template of sorts for creating a standard wasp in a box :)

[@technithusiast]

I have one coming up it will be released soon so check back regularly! But If you want to stay up to date on the automation I create and videos I release, check out technithusiast.com and sign up for the newsletter

[@atomicdetailsoc]

I have the OG Motion Sensors before P1 and P2. I swear there was a parameter in the settings menut to change the sensitivity but now i cant find it for the life of me...guh. was it removed on gen 1s?

[@JeremiLorenti]

Really like your videos man! Odd question though - Any reason your video framerate seems... off? Like it's low? Is it a style choice?

[@technithusiast]

Ahhh in this video it was a mixed bag. I keep my timeline in 24fps. I typically record on a single camera at 24fps but since this video require more movement I used my phone. Some of the clips were at 4k @ 24fps but since that eats up space, I recorded others were at 1080p 30fps (that’s the lowest my phone would go.) I didn’t think anyone would notice… impressive 👏🏽

[@whatdaybob]

Hey man, love your content! Keep up the great work.

[@technithusiast]

Glad you like the content!

[@waynenocton]

Just a thought before watching much at all so disregard if this is a bad suggestion, but I’ve had recent good experiences using Home Assistant’s repeat until function. I have my HVAC fan run until temperatures normalize between two areas, the fireplace, and my Honeywell thermostat’s reported temps. repeat: sequence: - service: fan.turn_on metadata: {} data: {} target: entity_id: fan.tasmota_hvac_fan - delay: hours: 0 minutes: 5 seconds: 0 milliseconds: 0 - service: fan.turn_off metadata: {} data: {} target: entity_id: fan.tasmota_hvac_fan - delay: hours: 0 minutes: 5 seconds: 0 milliseconds: 0 until: - condition: numeric_state entity_id: sensor.temperature_comparison below: 15.1 Seems very powerful.

[@technithusiast]

Thanks and I appreciate the suggestion! I haven’t heard of the repeat until function so I’ll check it out. Based on the script you posted, the tricky part would be the condition as motion sensors can stop detecting a person but i do see this function being useful to reduce the logic needed to maintain a specific state. Thanks again for the suggestion!

[@waynenocton]

@@technithusiast yes it was new to me too, made me crazy trying to get the fan to run when needed, but in that repeat until loop, you can do a ton of things, nearly endless! Been trying to use ChatGPT to help with automations and templates etc, and it is helpful but wow it makes a lot of stupid mistakes too. Almost like a gps, super helpful but can take you on a joyride or make you sit in traffic too, just another tool. I’m struggling like crazy with having my outside lights all come on when any family member arrives, but turns off reliably with a multitude of scenarios, I’m just not getting the big picture I guess, every time I think I got it perfect, I do something different that throws a wrench into it. Like if I use a timer so once I’m home they come on, then say 3 minutes after an external door opens, the lights go off. But then I let the dog out within that 3 minutes and it turns the light off on the poor old dog. Frustrating yet fun. Keep up the good work, your content and media quality is second to exactly none!

[@_Silly-Dad_]

I absolutely love the troubleshooting video, IMO it makes things clear to those new to the game that THIS is what home automation and programming in general is all about. Unless you're dead set on using the Apple ecosystem for this, you can 💯 use Home Assistant. Create a helper entity with a bool value to hold the state of the wasp. This is a great video, love your content.

[@technithusiast]

Really glad you enjoyed the journey! I don’t typically use apple HomeKit so this was a challenge to see how well it (and my patience) holds up 😅 You are definitely correct about home assistant. I do plan to release a follow-up showing my thoughts around that.

[@PatrickBulteel]

There's a Wasp In the box blueprint in the HA community forums.

[@technithusiast]

Indeed! In a future video I plan on exploring HA solutions around this concept

[@hubertwouts]

owke wauw more music then voice. leaving youur channel.

[@technithusiast]

Thanks for also leaving a comment 😬