Does anybody have any advice on a good ambient light sensor? I have my lights set up to rely on DarkWeather, with various conditions in Reactor. The problem is that it may say 90% cloud cover, and still be very bright outside. I’m looking for an alternative, where I can put a few light sensors throughout the house to judge light level in the house. I’m not expecting perfection, but the wife is complaining that lights come on when it’s bright outside because of Dark Weathers reporting. I know there are limitations of battery powered sensors and how often they can report, so I know it wont’ be perfect, but I just need an improvement here.
I’m using various tasmota sensors for this task. It’s dyi, but each device will cost about 10/15 bucks and it’s WiFi based, so easily integrated.
If you want to stick to Zwave, then I know fibaro’s multi sensors are ok, but more pricey.
I don’t necessarily want to limit myself to Z-wave. I want something that actually works and is reliable, and that I can integrate into the logic of Reactor. My google searches have brought up mixed reviews of some of the sensors out there, including the Fibaro and Aeotec.
How do the Tasmota sensors work exactly? All i could really find on them is a gitub page. How do you integrate those into Vera?
Neo CoolCam are pretty decent Z-Wave motion sensors and they have lots of Z-Wave parameter settings for controlling everything, better than the Fibaro ones in my opinion.
I’ve them as well, and they’re not reliable. One is reporting ok, others sometimes and sometimes not.
I’m really happier with my tasmota ones.
They are WiFi based. You build a base, add sensors and then create virtual sensors to report values back to Vera.
I use the Homesee HSM200 with PLEG and works well (not battery powered and not too fancy). (note really really old v1s report in % instead of lumens, if buying used or something). But either should work with reactor. Since they have colors, and temp sensors I also use them to signal temp in the house and/or when the alarm is armed (just don’t leave the LED on a lot, messes with the light reading, I usually just have the LED show the indicator color for a few seconds when it detects motion).
I’m wondering if there could be a way to adapt the Shelly Temp Add On to light monitoring by swapping out the T-Probe for a Light Sensor?
The theory seems OK, so I’ll leave it to the experimenters.
If it can be then it would be a inexpensive way of providing mains powered monitoring?
Nope, because they’ll need to write a specific driver for a different sensor. It was asked in their fb group and it’s not in their radar soon. But tasmota is ok and I’m not great at soldering. You could build something similar with no soldering at all and very similar results.