Motion Sensor Not Sensitive Enough to Be a Reliable Trigger

I want to say first off I love Wyze. As their offering of products have grown we have always been happy to support, and add them to our smart home inventory. We have mutliple Wyze Pan cams, bought two of their new smart plugs, got the Wyze Sense pack, and are eagerly awaiting their outdoor cams. We’ve got everything but their stationary cams (have the pans instead), and their lightbulbs, which we operate mostly on smart switches instead of bulbs but if we weren’t their bulbs would be high on our list and as they improve them (adding things like color changing) as our few old hue ones eventually go out we will likely go with Wyze.

That being said, with all of this we decided to try out IFTTT with Wyze… we had the motion sensor in our pantry and I decided to connect that with IFTTT to see if I could get the Philips Hue light in there to turn on and off. It has enough of a delay that using IFTTT to turn it on wasn’t really practical; no big deal. The main problem was the light getting left on when no one was in there… and pairing it with IFTTT even with a slight delay worked like a charm.

I got excited and ordered more to place throughout the house. The kids are always leaving things on. My plan was to put one in our dining room, kitchen, office, and family room. The family room was perhaps the most important as a couple lights and then two fountains we have (which are hooked up to the wyze plugs) regularly get left on when no one is in the room.

Linked the motion sensors into the various plugs and lights using IFTTT. Worked like a charm in testing. That was until my husband and I were both sitting down in the family room chatting… some motion but not much. Next thing we know everything is turning off.

This began a couple hours worth of trouble shooting efforts… checking info about sensor placement, moving it and seeing if we could overcome this problem, but to no avail.

Currently as this is going on I’m testing, within the Wyze app itself the ability to set triggers… right now we’re testing to see if the motion sensor is clear for 15 min, before it turns off the plugs. We are also testing to see if using the plugs as a trigger in IFTTT will affect another smart plug in the room (by wemo) and also the smart light switch we have in the room (Lutron Caseta).

Thus far the 15 min time within the app seems to working.

Has anyone else had this issue? Did you find a fix for it? We have placed them in areas with high visibility that shouldn’t be blocked from witnessing motion in the active areas of the room, and we’ve moved the sensors down to six feet or less. This didn’t seem to affect the sensor’s ability or liklihood to detect smaller movements. If we’re having this issue with Wyze plugs I imagine we’d be having the same issue with Wyze Bulbs.

I hope that perhaps in the future Wyze can allow the units’ sensitivity to be adjusted as I think this might be a fix for the sensitivity issue and make them a bit more practical as a trigger.

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I have a few different brands of motion sensors, including WYZE and as far as the motion I think you are talking about, I have had the same ‘issue’ with all of them. I have found that for instance if you are sitting and watching TV the slight movements you may make are not picked up, it does see the larger ones. I have mine set to turn off after 20 minutes without movement and I seem to have no issues with them turning off when I am in the room because in those 20 minutes you will make a large enough move to pick up.

I’m finding with Wyze products on the Wyze app the 15 min. or more as a trigger is working and I can use those triggered events to trigger other events in IFTTT. Just wish those time considerations could be ported into IFTTT in order to trigger other non Wyze products.

After a somewhat lengthy discussion we are getting two more plugs and getting our first two Wyze Bulbs. The time specifications within the app can turn those off… and those events can serve as triggers for non-Wyze products within IFTTT.

Doing it this way was cheaper than any other option we could find.

What other products are you trying to trigger?

Mostly Lutron Caseta smart switches… though there are two wemo smart switches we have from before Wyze came out with their smart switch. There are also a couple Philips Hue smart bulbs.

I know we could swap out the Hue bulbs with Wyze’s, and same with the wemo switches, but trying not to throw more money at a fix then we have to. Anyway it still wouldn’t fix the issue with the Lutron smart switches. We put smart switches in when the cost of smart bulbs would have exceeded the cost of the smart switch and the two rooms we are most worried about easily have 10+ bulbs in each of them. Regular, non-smart LEDs are far more cost effective with the switch.

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Post was edited by a third party to ammend the title to “IFTTT Trigger”, but without the timing options unfortunately it’s not just an IFTTT issue. It would happen within Wyze’s app as well without the timing.

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I apologize. I was trying to shorten up and clarify the title. Many times titles don’t clearly state what the topic is about, and we try to help the community with clearer titles. Would you like the “IFTTT” part removed? :slight_smile:

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Thanks for responding. Yes I would as the Wyze sensors have the unfortunate problem within the app as well without the time added function. Wish it wasn’t the case.

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Done…

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