Sensing humans reliably turns out to be an incredibly hard problem. Motion sensors on their own won't do it, because humans sometimes stand/sit around without doing much.
Cameras won't do it for similar reasons (plus privacy) although adding AI object/person recognition would help if it could be made reliable enough.
Heat sensors can be fooled by ambient temperature variations, hot water from a tap, or by steam from the shower. And so on.
So this continues to be an unsolved problem for home automation. I'm guessing it needs some kind of active necklace/bracelet/watch ID system with per-room localisation to really solve it. Or maybe LIDAR for active 3D mapping. (Good news for pets who like turning the lights on...)
What i found to be semi-reliable is something like room-assistant or ESPresense - however, you need to have some kind of Bluetooth device/wearable on you to be able to really get room-level reliability...
You're spot on. LIDAR sounds interesting but I don't know of any off the shelf solutions.
I'm leaning towards using motion sensors like gates. Instead of pointing them out into the room you mount them looking across thresholds like door frames. If you have enough sensors you can get a sense of direction and keep track of where people are. It is a bit fragile though. For example if two people enter a space within seconds of each other this might not be recognised effectively. It depends how quickly your motion sensors reset.
I tried to use Bluetooth presence detection but it seems my smart watch doesn't broadcast its identity once it is paired with a device. I could leave it unpaired but then I lose syncing and notifications.
I have seen some folks on YouTube place cameras in each room and they stream the video locally and perform face detection with it. I haven't felt comfortable enough to put cameras in every room yet, but I may bite the bullet at some point.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 18.8 ms ] threadCameras won't do it for similar reasons (plus privacy) although adding AI object/person recognition would help if it could be made reliable enough.
Heat sensors can be fooled by ambient temperature variations, hot water from a tap, or by steam from the shower. And so on.
So this continues to be an unsolved problem for home automation. I'm guessing it needs some kind of active necklace/bracelet/watch ID system with per-room localisation to really solve it. Or maybe LIDAR for active 3D mapping. (Good news for pets who like turning the lights on...)
https://github.com/ESPresense/ESPresense https://www.room-assistant.io/
I'm leaning towards using motion sensors like gates. Instead of pointing them out into the room you mount them looking across thresholds like door frames. If you have enough sensors you can get a sense of direction and keep track of where people are. It is a bit fragile though. For example if two people enter a space within seconds of each other this might not be recognised effectively. It depends how quickly your motion sensors reset.
I tried to use Bluetooth presence detection but it seems my smart watch doesn't broadcast its identity once it is paired with a device. I could leave it unpaired but then I lose syncing and notifications.
I have seen some folks on YouTube place cameras in each room and they stream the video locally and perform face detection with it. I haven't felt comfortable enough to put cameras in every room yet, but I may bite the bullet at some point.