Hey all, just wanted to share what I’ve figured out fiddling with motion sensors in a multi-room setup. I’ve been toying around with this for a few months now and I think I’ve finally hit a sweet spot — figured someone here might find it useful or maybe even have ideas to improve it.
Started off simple, just one sensor near the hallway to trigger the lights. But then I thought, what if I could chain a bunch of them across rooms to create more intuitive automations? Like actual room-by-room awareness.
So here’s what I did: I placed Aqara motion sensors in the living room, hallway, and kitchen. Instead of each working independently, I used Home Assistant to build a sort of “presence tracker”. If motion is detected in the hallway after someone was in the living room, and then soon after in the kitchen — boom — it knows you’re moving through the house. This cascades lighting, adjusts the thermostat as you move, even kicks up the air purifier if needed.
What surprised me is how NATURAL it feels now. No need for manual triggering or apps — it just works. The trick was dialing in the timeouts and knowing where to place the sensors so they don’t interfere with each other or trigger false positives (had to ban my cat from one room lol).
Anyone else running a setup like this? Or using motion sensors in creative ways? Curious how others avoid the “lights randomly turn off while I’m still here” problem, especially when you’re just chilling and not moving much.
Keen to hear your setups or pain points. This stuff’s addictive once it starts working right!