Motion detector incompatible with forced air heating?

I’m currently heating primary with a minisplit heat exchanger system. As a simplified description, you can think of this as radiators with fans mounted high on the wall, with vanes that direct the hot air in appropriate directions (usually downward) for mixing when heat is called for.

Unfortunately this seems to be incompatible with Wyse’s IR motion detectors. Those were working fine before the heating system turned on, but now I’m getting false triggers.

I’ve tried relocating the sensors to make sure they aren’t pointed at the heating/blower heads, as instructed in the user’s guide. Unfortunately, the plume of warned air itself seems to be enough to set them off, even at minimum sensitivity. In one case that seems to be happening even with the air escaping through a door into the monitored hallway.

I’m not sure what else I can do except give up on the thermal motion sensors. Which would be really annoying, since five of these cover my house’s critical areas quite well when not heating, and replacing them with other kinds of sensor (cameras, or window and door sensors) would significantly drive up the cost and hassle of this system.

Any suggestions welcome. I’m willing to run any tests which might help diagnose and cure the problem, or share photos/sketches of the installation.

I like wyze’s attempts to find low-cost solutions, but I think this one may just not work in modern temperate-zone housing.

I do have HMS and a motion sensor installed pretty close to my minisplit exchanger.
It is working properly and it never triggered when the heat pump is working.

The sensor is diagonally mounted at 7 feet high on the same wall at about 12 feet from the exchanger.

Wish I knew what’s different about my setups, then. Either it’s the heat pump, or it’s pure random false alarms.

This started being a problem when I changed the set of the heat exchanger’s vanes to direct heat more downward. It’s possible that in your case, and in mine before that change, the airflow was just going over the top of the sensor’s line of sight…

I’m guessing. All I know for sure is that I get false triggers.

No comments at all from Wyze? I’d have hoped to at least see a few official suggestsions… I know, Wyze’s customer support has always been a bit questionable, but I would have hoped that for a security product they’d invest a bit more manpower in it. The system is almost unusable as it now stands.

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Not likely to be any as this is primarily a user forum and the Wyze staff doesn’t spend much time here.

Yes, this is a user-to-user forum. Contact Wyze support directly if you want something more.

I have seen something similar along this line. I have a bathroom Wyze Night Light who’s battery life is greatly reduced during the winter. The reason is because its motion sensor sees the heat from my forced air floor vent two feet in front of it. To solve the problem, I simply removed the Night Light from its vertical mount facing the vent and set it on the counter facing up. A little ugly, but it no longer sees the floor vent, but still sees me as I enter the bathroom at night. :slight_smile:

I’ll put it back on its usual mount as soon as the furnace stops running. Or find a less affected position. In the meantime, I’d suggest finding a position for your sensor that detects you, but not the heat source. This may be difficult depending on how powerful your source is, but something should be possible.

I actually had a motion sensor once that I cut a plastic party drink cup down for (shortened it, then cut the shortened piece in half vertically, then mounted it as a hood over the sensor). It was ugly, but the sensor then only detected things below it, and I mounted it very low so it only picked up what I was looking for. I was looking for creatures on my back patio, and I didn’t want the sensor to see branches waving in front of the sun above.