With all the excitement around the FP400 beta testing, I thought it might be useful to share how I am using the FP300s and FP2s along with some gotchas and lessons learned.
Disclaimer: I used Claude to assist me in the writing of this topic by using my actual device and automation info from Home Assistant via the HA MCP. Gotchas and lessons learned are actual and not theoretical.
I’ve got 8 FP300s and 5 FP2s running across my house, and they’re not doing the same job. If you’re trying to figure out which one to use where, here’s exactly how I’ve got them split and what I did to get each one dialed in.
FP300 — point sensor, Zigbee, battery-powered. Mine cover: Office, Game Room, Bar Area, Kitchen, Grandma’s Room, both Guest Rooms, and the Safe Room. These are single-point presence detectors — good for “is anyone in this room,” not for tracking where in the room.
- Tune the Absence Delay Timer per room, not once for the whole house. Too short and lights cut out mid-use. Too long and you’re burning lights for ten minutes after everyone’s left. A small guest room and an open bar area need different values.
- Run Zigbee, not Matter/Thread. Per the manual, AI Spatial Learning and full detection range are Zigbee-only — switch modes and you lose both. Also: switching protocols is a full factory reset, not a toggle. Pick Zigbee on purpose.
- If it feels laggy, check the automation layer before blaming the sensor. I pulled Home Assistant’s automation trace data on mine — sensors fire in 45-79ms, every time. The delay is almost never the hardware.
- Know the 6542 stuck-presence bug and rule out step 3 first before assuming you’ve hit it.
FP2 — room-mapping radar, Wi-Fi/HomeKit, wired power. Mine cover: Master Bedroom, Changing Room, Living Room, Laundry Room, and Training Room. This is a completely different tool — it’s mapping the whole room into a 320-cell floorplan grid and tracking actual position, not just “occupied or not.”
- This one’s wired, plan your mounting accordingly. USB-C into a wall adapter — no battery to swap, but you need power at the mounting point, which matters more for wall/ceiling placement than the FP300 ever did.
- Match sensitivity to the room type. High sensitivity in static rooms (bedrooms) for faster response; low sensitivity in rooms with regular motion (hallways, laundry) to cut down false alarms. This is the FP2 version of the Absence Delay Timer tuning — skip it and you’ll fight false triggers.
- Mark interference sources before you walk away. Curtains, fans, anything that moves on its own needs to be flagged, or it’ll register as a target. Only do this once the room is actually empty — don’t mark a spot you’re standing in.
- When it gets stuck, there’s a dedicated fix. “Reset to Absence Status” clears every tracked target in the space — this is the FP2’s answer to the FP300’s stuck-presence problem, and it’s a one-tap fix instead of a firmware workaround.
Bottom line on which to use where: small/single-purpose rooms where you just need on/off logic — FP300, cheaper and battery-free-of-wiring-hassle. Rooms where position actually matters (bedroom occupancy split by side of bed, laundry room entry/exit, a training room where I want to know where in the room someone is) — FP2, worth the wired install for the zone data.
Running both taught me the real lesson: don’t force one sensor to do both jobs. I tried treating an FP300 like a zone sensor early on and it’s just not built for that — wrong tool.