Motion control: Express Control EZmotion vs Everspring SP814

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
1

Hello,

I would like to share my experience on the following devices as well:

  • EZmotion Express Control 3-in-1
  • Everspring SP814

Documentation
The topic is easy. The everspring brings a fair to good documentation while the EZmotion comes with a ridiculous and useless piece of paper. The only useful information is how to include the module and what kind of batteries it uses (in case you cannot figure it out yourself…)

Everspring SP814
First, I started with an everspring sensor and I have to say it does the trick pretty well.
The device was easy to setup and worked right away as expected. Only drawback compared to the 3-in-1, the everspring does ONLY motion. I heard it can beep, mine never did. I wish I could also disable or program the led inside the everspring module but it does not seem possible.

My SP814 is set with the following settings:

[ol][li]1 byte dec, 99[/li]
[li]1 byte dec, 3[/li]
[li]1 byte dec, 10[/li][/ol]

I am currently measuring over time how much battery these settings take, for now, it looks fair.

I have programmed a light to go off when the motion detector detects movement AND this is during the day.(!isnight()).

Express Control EZMotion 3-in-1
On the paper, a great device. First I tested the motion detection, the device seems to react very quick. It feels more snappy than the SP814. Inclusion was not of the easiest.
First I started, “to see”, with the settings set to “Stay Awakeon”. What should happened happened, it drained my batteries in no time (few days).

After that, I tried finding reasonable settings. Today I am using:

[ol][li]180[/li]
[li]3[/li]
[li]255[/li]
[li]50[/li]
[li]0[/li]
[li]255[/li][/ol]

The battery usage is now reasonable but I did not check over a period that is long enough to compare with the SP814.

The EZmotion brings back the temperature and the light level. Or at least it should. The idea is that it can be put grouped with a light and decide when the light should be turned on. This is how I understand that it should work. The sensor return a light level between 0 and 100. 0 is dark, 100 is bright. It is possible to define a threshold for the light level. I set it to 50 but it changes nothing. No matter if the current level is under or above, the light goes off anyway.

And that should not have anything to do with the Vera since the light and the sensor are in the same group so the sensor controls the light directly.

If you go this EZmotion to work properly, please let me know your settings and configuration, I would love to use this device but at the moment, I cannot recommend it.

Will

PS: Using a Vera with latest update.

2

I was finally able to get the battery usage under control as I previously said but some problems remain with the EZmotion sensor:

[ol][li]Blinking[/li]
[li]Falling asleep[/li][/ol]

BLINKING:
Sometimes, the light controlled by the EZMotion start blinking. It goes on an off repeatedly during a couple of seconds and then stops. This is rather annoying, not so mention that the light bulb probably does not like it too much.

FALLING ASLEEP:
The issue is clear on the chart below. The chart below show the light level coming from the sensor, and recorded every 5s.
As you see, around 21:00 on the chart (I say 21:00 on the chart because I chart the data wrong and the time has an offset), the value is 5% and remains 5%. To wake up the device (that was still detecting movement, I could see the LED blinking when I moved), I pressed the little blue button. I did not do ANYTHING on the Vera during the whole process. Miracle: after a few seconds, the Vera sees the new level: 100%.

Anyone has the same issue?

3

The settings from your initial post seem reasonable for battery operation and should only turn the associated light on when the light level drops below 50.

Have you verified that those settings are actually active (i.e. show as [tt]Current Value[/tt] on the [tt]Device Options[/tt] tab)?
Are the batteries reasonably fresh?
What is the [tt]Wakeup interval[/tt] time set to on the [tt]Settings[/tt] tab?

4

Hello,

Thanks for your answer. Here are the answers to your questions.

Yes I am tuning this over time. I reduced it more and it works better. Since I am charting now, I should soon be able to fine tune.

Yes they are.

They used to be. At the moment, they are at 39%. I just measured 1.29V.
It could be an explanation. However, since I pressed the blue button, the sensor works again.

360s

5

Having your 3 in 1 wake up every 5 minutes will drain the battery pretty fast. Do you need it to wake up that often?

  • Garrett
6

What do you suggest?

I could try using longer, I will set it up to 15 min and see if the battery life improves.

7

I have mine set to 30 minutes. Motion will wake device when tripped. Mine lasts for many months.

  • Garrett
8

I’ve seen ‘strange’ (on/off/LED) behavior with the HSM100 when the batteries get low; so you could just try a fresh set to see if that solves the ‘blinking’ issue.

I have the wake-up interval set to the default 1800s as well. There is an older topic here that discusses (problems with) different values, but HSM100 and wake-up handling has changed quite a bit in recent firmware.

9

[quote=“garrettwp, post:7, topic:171416”]I have mine set to 30 minutes. Motion will wake device when tripped. Mine lasts for many months.

  • Garrett[/quote]
    Ok, I switched to 1200 for now to see if I can notice something. If it still works good, I will extend to 1800+

[quote=“oTi@, post:8, topic:171416”]I’ve seen ‘strange’ (on/off/LED) behavior with the HSM100 when the batteries get low; so you could just try a fresh set to see if that solves the ‘blinking’ issue.

I have the wake-up interval set to the default 1800s as well. There is an older topic here that discusses (problems with) different values, but HSM100 and wake-up handling has changed quite a bit in recent firmware.[/quote]
Are you talking about the Vera firmware? I am using a Vera3 on latest firmware. The only issue I see with a long wake up is that I can no longer rely too much on the value Vera has to trigger a scene.
For instance, let´s say that (just an example) I want to close the blinds when the light level goes below a given value. Then I may have a delay as long as the wake up time is.

Although, and since you raise the topic, I checked the other motion sensor I have and it uses as well 1800s.

Thank you both for your inputs. My battery is actually around 42% (the 39% I gave above got updated :)) so I don´t consider it low. To troubleshoot this, I am recording the times when the blinking occurs, I will keep an eye if that matches the battery going under a certain threshold.

10

Have you considered modifying the sensor to use a power adapter rather than batteries. You’d then be able to poll the sensor as often as you’d like.

11

Yes but that sucks :slight_smile:
The nice thing about these devices is that they can be battery powered and thus places everywhere without another bunch of cables, power supply etc…

12

Right, and with that comes the trade-off between battery life and update frequency, depending on your main application.

13

Well this is the point actually because the everspring sensors for instance seem to be sucking battery wayyyyy less.

Today, I can start noticing some issues on the EZMotion just when the battery passed under 30% (~1.205V). Now I need to constantly press the blue button to wake it up whereas I did not have to do it since I changed the batteries.

For now, I will let the batteries die and see if the blinking comes back. That would confirm the current theory.

Then I will put new batteries and definitely increase the wake up time and max poll.
I wish they´d make a version with AA batteries instead, that would have last longer.

I suppose that if the EZmotion start complaining at 30%, trying rechargeable batteries makes no sense. Although 30% = 1.205V so rechargeable AAA may work. Did someone try?

14

While I am not using my EZmotion for triggering on the light level, I am quite happy with it.
I have it installed in a rental apartment in my house, and it has been working perfectly for about a year now. Not sure if the battery status works, because it shows 90%.
So it seams strange to me that you are already at 30%?

(also I have it set on 1800 seconds)

This is the european version, but I guess they should have similar battery performance.

15

I have also the European version but I realized that I made the mistake to lower way too much the poll interval of some devices.

I will see with next batteries.I need to change them today.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

16

I have several EZmotion 3-in-1 sensors. I have no problems with turning on lights on motion and then off when no motion by the use of 2 scenes being triggered when armed sensor is tripped and setting “Device is tripped” and “Device is not tripped” options respectively.
My problem is that when it wakes up is not updating the temperature and light readings.

What is the settings you are using for “Poll this node at most once every”?

I used to have them blank for default, which was 60 seconds but recently, Tech Support helped me with some issues and re-configured these settings to 0 (Never poll). Having them default was slowing down my unit’s performance and response considerably (Vera 3 running the latest version: 1.5.346). When I had them in default, it was working great and battery life was totally acceptable lasting several months.

Should Wake up effectively report back the temperature and luminosity readings? Or should I poll every so often? What happens if I it polls and the unit is asleep?

Thanks in advance.-

17

I have mine at:

[tt]Wakeup interval (seconds)[/tt]: 1800
[tt]Poll this node at most every[/tt]: 60

Not sure how the poll setting would affect the performance, assuming you’re operating the sensor on batteries. Getting the temperature and light level relies on the wake-up interval.

You can’t poll a device that is asleep. (Note that the poll setting is a maximum (i.e. at most), not a minimum (i.e. at least); there is no setting to poll a device every X seconds, other than a timed scene with an explicit poll command.)