Hi everyone. I’ve been looking through this forum, trying to get a sense for which sensors are the most popular. Is there a consensus? At the moment I’m just looking for the best motion sensor that hopefully is fairly inexpensive. From the prices I’ve seen, Z-Wave motion sensors are heading into the $50-80 range, which seems pretty high (then again, most Z-Wave stuff seems expensive). At that range am I best-off just getting the Aeon Labs sensor for motion and hoping it gets support in Vera for the rest of it down the line? I have one of these already and it does a good enough job at motion sensing, but if there’s a cheaper option somewhere that does only motion I might be interested in going with that…
I think the Aeotec’s offer a great value, given that you get 4 sensors.
I did pick up the Everspring SP103 through HomeSeer not too long ago, but they weren’t a whole lot cheaper (just under $50 IIRC); and they don’t have them anymore; they also have older Z-Wave firmware.
I do like the HomePro ZIR000, which were going on eBay a long time ago, for around $40.
Is “Aeotec” something other than the Aeon Labs sensor, or is that the same thing? I’ll check those others out, but it really seems like if the public Vera release catches up to the beta and makes the other three sensors in the Aeon Labs units work, those would be the best value. I just wasn’t sure if there was like a $30 sensor out there somewhere…
Same thing. It appears Aeotec is the new name.
One would assume the new public beta will have the changes for the Aeotec 4-in-1, but MCV have not confirmed one way or the other.
To be honest, I would use wired PIR sensors if you can. As much as I like Z-Wave technology, my house can generate over 7000 PIR events per day and you don’t really want to be pushing this much data over a relatively slow, wireless network if you can avoid it. I pay about £6 per sensor too.
Rob
How many sensors is this? Can one sensor generate multiple events per, say, minute?
[quote=“dreamgreenhouse, post:5, topic:173093”]To be honest, I would use wired PIR sensors if you can. As much as I like Z-Wave technology, my house can generate over 7000 PIR events per day and you don’t really want to be pushing this much data over a relatively slow, wireless network if you can avoid it. I pay about £6 per sensor too.
Um…you’ve got it…how exactly do I use those with Vera?
[quote=“Dignan17, post:7, topic:173093”][quote=“dreamgreenhouse, post:5, topic:173093”]To be honest, I would use wired PIR sensors if you can. As much as I like Z-Wave technology, my house can generate over 7000 PIR events per day and you don’t really want to be pushing this much data over a relatively slow, wireless network if you can avoid it. I pay about £6 per sensor too.
Um…you’ve got it…how exactly do I use those with Vera?[/quote]
This was from the web page
"Interface
Our very first attempt used our 1-Wire input board to detect changes in PIR sensor state but, this technology is not fast enough to allow many sensors to be used. We subsequently migrated the PIR sensors over to a USB I/O board and this has been working reliably for a long time. We are also now using Ethernet I/O boards."
This is how I did it
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,12167.0.html
I have a PIR sensor in pretty much every room in the house (not bedrooms), so 9 in total. I could also use Z-Wave ones if I wanted to, as I’m using a hybrid technology home control system, I’ve developed myself. Z-Wave is just one part of it and is used where I can’t avoid wired technologies or where there are specific Z-Wave components I need. My PIR sensors are all currently wired to a central point as are all the door contact sensors (I have one on every door too).
The 7000+ is a worst case, weekend day, where all 4 of us are in the house. I use a dedicated USB I/O board to interface them all and generate ‘events’. These could be used with a Vera device as the main controller but, I’m using it the other way around as a Z-Wave gateway to my own automation controller software (written in Java) running on a Windows 7 Mini-ITX PC (consumes about 11W of power). You can use scenes or LUA code. It is possible to send socket layer comms from a Vera in LUA code and this is what I do.
The Vera is excellent bit of kit and I love Z-Wave but, it isn’t the most appropriate technology (cost, power, performance, etc.) to use in every case. This is why I went down a hybrid route.
Rob