Reliable occupancy detection of someone in a room

Questions & Help
1

Hello All,

I’m looking for a solution that can tell me if someone is in a room (aka occupancy). This seems to be very difficult.

You can find plenty of motion sensors such as Fibaro motion sensor, neo coolcam, aqara, … and they do work to some extend : detect if someone enters a room and turn the on light for example

The problem is that those sensors do only detect large movements. When you sit at a table or in a sofa but don’t make large movements, those motion sensors won’t be triggered.

I have been looking at several solutions such as:

  1. X4M300 Sensor : detects someone breathing in a room, but is an expensive sensor and I don’t know how to integrate it with Homey, Home Assistant or any other domotic platform (https://shop.xethru.com/x4m300)
  2. combination of motion sensors, but zigbee/z-wave/wifi sensors do only seem to focus on larger movements
  3. using mobile phones, bluetooth tokens, detect someone via wifi, but all those solutions requires that you carry something with you
  4. wasp principle: but need the right sensors

I still have one solution I would like to test:

  • adding aqara vibration sensors at some strategic places (under a table or sofa) which I think could work fine in tandem with motion sensors. The idea behind this is that the aqara sensors will detect very small vibration when someone sits at a table or in the sofa.

Can anyone help finding a good solution?

Some interesting info:
https://smartisant.com/research/presence/index.php
https://www.home-assistant.io/components/bayesian/
https://www.openhabfoundation.org/documents/2017-10_.Markus_Storm_Presence_detection_and_some_cool_applications.pdf

2

only sensor i know detecting the presence of a human is this one:
https://www.steinel.de/de/handwerk-gewerbe/landingpages2/ueber/true-presence.html
it is expensive as well

3

I’ve used the aqara vibration sensor on the sofa and an outdoor bench. Unfortunately unless it’s mounted near the cushion where u sit or somewhere that has a large vibration, it can’t pick up movement. I have it on my outdoor bench on the edge when the bench meets the leg and there is almost no detection unless I sit on it hard. I tried mounting it on a thin string so it springs as the bench move but it’s still a hit and miss.
It kinda needs to be mounted at where the axis of movement is the greatest like a door or drawer…

4

You can try to measure if you have any devices on in that zone, in the living room lots of people have a television and/or radio on when they are in the living room for example.