I bought the Wyze Sense Starter Kit to help me monitor my mother with dementia. She often gets up during the night confused about where she is and will wander around the house. I’m trying to figure out where to place the motion sensor in her bedroom so I will be notified when she gets up out of bed, but not every time she rolls over.
The manual says to place the sensor six feet high on the wall, but I’m worried this will pick up her every movement during the night. Would it work all right if I placed it closer to the floor? Any other suggestions would be much appreciated.
I am very sorry for your situation, but I am very sorry to inform you: Never, never rely on Wyze for anything, especially notifications. Wyze products are good toys for tinkerers like me. Your best would be something similar to this :Smart Caregiver Cordless Floor Mat Pressure Pad with Economy Cordless Alarm (No Alarm in Patient’s Room),
One thing you can do is limit the detection angle of the sensor to more of a beam using a piece of PVC tube, or apparently a core from Kirkland toilet paper. See links below for details.
I imagine setting up the beam about three feet off the ground parallel to the floor.
Where you place this beam obviously depends on the layout of the room - maybe the beam is at the doorway, maybe it is beside the bed if the bed is against the wall, etc.
/Edit
Just saw @desertshores 's post and that you are using Android, which has an issue with delayed notifications - especially when unplugged for the night. Depending on the Android version, they enter “doze” mode and do not report Wyze notifications in a timely manner at all. We are talking delays of 10 to 45 minutes.
So I second @desertshores 's concerns, and if you do try it out, leave your Android device on the charger all night.
Thanks for the advice about the floor mats. I’ve looked at things like that before, but that one is more than $500 here in Canada. So price is definitely a concern. Another problem with them is the volume of the alarm and the limited volume control. Even on the lowest setting some people complain they are too loud and can be heard throughout the whole house. For that kind of money you’d think they could provide more customization and perhaps a vibrate mode.
I put the sensor on top of the window frame tonight and it hasn’t gone off since mom went to bed. So we’ll see how it goes tonight and maybe I’ll try limiting the detection angle as described above. I usually keep my phone plugged in at night anyway, so hopefully there won’t be any delays. When I was testing it earlier it responded very fast.
Glad to hear that the sensor is working! And yes, as long as the Android doesn’t go into deep doze sleep, the Wyze alerts have been very quick for us.
Another approach we are using right now is Wyze v2 cams ( $26 shipped from Amazon) on the floor under furniture. They are actually quite good at detecting someone walking around a room while preserving privacy. Sound recording is deactivated. I have them sending alerts to an old iPhone 5s (just WiFi - not activated as a phone) which cost around $50 on eBay. I am US based, so adjust as necessary.
Put the sensor outside the door, facing the doorway.
Mount it on the ceiling in her room, facing the door. You can utilize mounting tape and a bracket that would allow you to point it in the right direction at the right angle.
Same idea but attach it with the tape on top of a piece of furniture that lets you target the door area.
Thanks for the tips. I definitely need it in the room, because she often spends time getting dressed, packing a bag, etc, before she will decide to leave the room. So I want to know as soon as possible when she is awake and out of bed.
I appreciate the suggestions desertshores, and will consider some of those things for redundancy, but I would ultimately like to be able to receive notifications and track mom’s movements when I am outside the home as well. So that’s why I decided to go with the Wyze.
Yes, but that doesn’t account for the complete unreliability and/or delay of Wyze notifications. There are too many ifs involved to depend on Wyze for someone’s safety.
Look into a laser beam sensor like stores use. That would be floor level and pick up movement like you want. Almost everything needs power, regardless of local alerts or on wifi. Figure out what hardware you can use that potentially can trigger or connect to Wyze, giving you on premise primary detection with secondary tie in to alerting you via Apps
Sometimes for unique situations, its nice to have a bag of ideas to draw from and try if others don’t work. I like what everyone has already said. But this might help if something changes.
Try placing the sensor on the floor under the bed facing where she would put her feet down. If its a V2 sensor, might try turning it upside down because the field of range is not straight out. Also, might consider putting a Wyze V3 cam with Cam Plus Lite turned on. It will help, and you can rollback the video and confirm what you suspect.
I hope what you are already doing is working out. But this was a good place to post some more/different ideas. Hope you don’t mind.
Have you tried putting the motion sensor as a “motion down”? Meaning putting the motion sensor on the ceiling facing down towards the ground? I masked (black electrical tape) the area I did not want the sensor to “see” motion. I did this in my hallway to only “see” motion in my hallway and not anywhere else. You will need to test that area it “detects”, to fine tune it by using the app. You can do the same on the wall by the bed and mask off the sensor with the black tape also. That way to will only detect movements away from the bed.
I hope this helps. Good luck to you!
