Hue Motion Sensor and Ambient light monitoring

Plugins & Plugin Development ALTHue
1

Hi all…
Can anybody using the Philips Hue Motion Sensor and the associated Ambient Light Sensor, please, report what kind of readings are you getting from the unit?

I mean… The sensor seems to work fine and the readings are pretty consistent but, oddly the figures shown are several magnitudes the readings coming from other light sensors in the same room…

Other sensor’s readings in the tens or hundreds, the Hue Motion Sensor in the thousands to tens of thousands…

Any Help about where to look?
Thanks guys!
Joe

2

Yes, readings differ a lot.
I have tried to place an other sensor beside.
Lights does not make sence.
Temperatur differs too, in my case about 2,5c less for the Hue.
Can it be ajusted.
Anyone ?

3

Hello again…

It may be interesting to know that looking at the sensor’s reading via different Apps, yelds different results:

Same sensor, of course, iOS Apps…

Using “Home” App: 496 Lux
Using “Eve” App: 500 Lux
Using “Vera” App: 27282 Lux !!! 8-?

Maybe worth some investigation…

@Svaleb
Absolute precision is another matter, of course… BTW, along the line of your observations, my Temp measurements with the Hue Sensor are a couple degrees down from what the Nest reads in the same room…

Don’t know if there is any way to adjust that…

Let’s see if someone else with more knowledge chimes in…
Bye!
Joe

4

Aha, I have not tried other apps.
They seem more accurat and understandable.
The temperature is anoying, 2,5c under others.

5

Uhmmm…

Seems that the Lux Readings from the Hue Light Sensor are wrongly reported only in Vera… both standard UI7 and AltUI…

Must be something in the Plugin…

@amg0… any chanche you’ll look into this?

Also, I echo what Svaleb said… 2 C? or more difference is annoying… any chance that this can be calibrated against some more reliable mean of measurement?

But this, probably, holds true for ANY sensor used in Home Automation…

Thanks!
Joe

6

[quote=“Joe Daring, post:5, topic:200615”]Uhmmm…

Seems that the Lux Readings from the Hue Light Sensor are wrongly reported only in Vera… both standard UI7 and AltUI…

Must be something in the Plugin…

@amg0… any chanche you’ll look into this?

Also, I echo what Svaleb said… 2 C? or more difference is annoying… any chance that this can be calibrated against some more reliable mean of measurement?

But this, probably, holds true for ANY sensor used in Home Automation…

Thanks!
Joe[/quote]

the plugin strictly reports the value provided by Philips Hue API without any attempts of normalization against a standard which is inexistant to my knowledge so I prefered to report the Philips value
this can be verified looking at the Hue Data tab page of the ALTHUE plugin , check the state property of the json data structure for that sensor

7

The temperature “offset” is pretty constant.
But I do not understand the light.

8

Hue light sensors report lightlevel, which is a non - dimensional number. The official conversion is lightlevel = 10000 * log10(lux) + 1, apparently. I would imagine that this is what is used in the Hue App and other consumers of the data. deCONZ applies the conversion before exposing the value, it would seem.
Personally I’m happy with the lightlevel in practical use, it’s just a shame that the Vera device tags it as being lux when it isn’t. Small downside to using a standard device, I guess.