January 1, 2021 by Maura

Lights out when you are still in the toilet?

In the smart home scenario, lights are on when people come in and light off when people leave, it’s the real demand in daily life, which is mainly used in the kitchen, bathroom, corridor and etc. There are problems that we may encounter in actual daily life, lights out when you are still in the toilet.

1 problem analysis

There are many IR motion sensors in the market. Price varies, but in the smart home business, we mostly use the motion sensor. The technical theory of the sensor is pyroelectric infrared, which can monitor the movement of the creature with temperature. Once the organisms stay still, the sensor cannot detect them anymore, so we call this kind of sensor more exactly a “Human movement detector”, or “passive infrared sensor”.

The characteristic of the pyroelectric sensor is more accurate when the scene from unoccupied to occupied, from occupied to unoccupied is not necessarily accurate. So the motion detector is not a big deal when using for security scenes, for scenarios where a person is detected to turn on the lights and turn them off at regular intervals.

However, when you set up a scenario: when the motion sensor detects no one, the light will automatically turn off at once. As we know, many people used to use their cellphones when going to the bathroom and they will also tend to sit quite still, which resulting in an embarrassing situation – the hub automatically turning off the lights, because the sensor detects no one here. At this hour, you will need to move your body or wave your hands to allow the motion sensor to detect you and the hub to turn the light back on.

In our exchange and discussion with users, we have summarized 2 tips that can largely avoid this embarrassment.

2 tips for optimization

First, extend the valid time, such as 8 minutes, so that only in a period lasting 8 minutes the sensor detects no one, will trigger the judgment of the lights off scenes, much better than the default 30-second turn off the light. It will be a lot more unlikely to happen when human beings stay still for 8 minutes. But if necessary, you can extend the duration time.

Tips: Geeklink’s scenario trigger event can be freely changed for both sensors and switching conditions for duration.

Second, install a door sensor for bathrooms. The trigger event of automatic lights off—only doors open the lights can be turn off, so when you go to the toilet, because the door is closed, even if no one is detected, the light-off action will not be executed. When nobody is in the bathroom, the door is open and detects that no one is there，the smart home hub will automatically turn off the light.

3 Sharing

Further, the fundamental solution is the need to upgrade the motion sensor to the presence sensor, we also have this option, however, these kinds of sensors are more expensive. A presence sensor can accurately detect the presence or absence of people in space, whether moving or not.

We also have a solution that is not that expensive but quite troublesome when wiring. I can share in future articles.