Directional Motion Sensors

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
1

Does anyone know of directional motion sensors (ones that can indicate the direction of the movement) that can be integrated with Vera?
http://www.glolab.com/dp-005/dp-005.html

I have several applications where I’d like to know if a person is leaving a room vs entering the room or especially in an open floor plan.
Could something like the above sensor be adapted to work with Vera?

I was looking this a little more as I wrote a blog entry about micro-location (presence detection).

2

You’ve seen these threads/ posts?

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,12799.msg95496.html#msg95496

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,14784.msg112242.html#msg112242

3

Fibaro (who makes the cat eye looking sensor), demonstrates this on their web site by putting two sensor on the celing of each side of the door frame to allow you to count folks going in and out of rooms.

4

Or use the two outputs from the directional sensor into a Fibaro RGBW relay using the analogue inputs. Programming in Vera could probably allow what you need.

5

Ok, It?s not quite finished, but it’s close enough that I want to share my ?occupancy counter? solution.

After looking at all the options everyone has suggested, like WIAB, radar, RFDI etc, I decided to try a ?through beam? sensor. There are lots of options, but I settled on tiny (very low power) IR laser emitters and light sensing modules I found on E-Bay. I?ll detail the parts list if anyone is interested. With one emitter/receiver pair mounted on each side of the door frame, it gives direction based on which is tripped first.

I originally connected a z-wave door sensor on each side, but found that Vera was too slow to reliably determine trip times that close together. Using a Raspberry Pi instead, has worked out great and the cost is about the same. Everything needed for one door (besides the Pi) is only about $10.00 (if you order from China and wait a month) I?ve only got one doorway completed so far, but one Pi should be able to monitor several doorways, so the cost per door is (I think) reasonable. The biggest pain (for me) was drilling and aligning the lasers to the receivers, and hiding the wiring behind the door trim. I?m using separate emitters and receivers, so I had to drill and wire 2 holes on each side of the door. The wiring and installation would be simplified with a reflective ?proximity? sensor with both send and receive in one, but I was not able to find anything that was small enough that would reach the width of a doorway.

I?m not much of a programmer, but wrote a Python thing that watches and counts 4 separate ?steps? to determine if someone has come in or out and keep a count of people in the room. All the logic is on the Pi, so when conditions are met, it just tells Vera to turn the light on or off. Any lag in Vera?s response doesn?t affect the PI. It?s been working for almost a week, and accuracy has been excellent! The picture with my hand shows the lasers installed in a doorway, and the other pic shows all the pieces needed on my ?test bench?.

Let me know if anyone would like more details. Also, any suggestions for improvements are very welcome.