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Project origin
The origin of this project is the experience gained trying to automate the lights in my own house.
The first option was voice command control to an assistant such as Siri or Alexa. It is something very technological, which serves to show off in front of visitors, but the user experience was very unsatisfactory.
Virtual assistants require remembering the commands and knowing the names of each light or room. Something that is not intuitive, especially for visits.
Furthermore, virtual assistants do not always understand the commands well and above all there is a delay between when you speak to them and the assistant processes it and launches the action.
The user experience did not seem acceptable.
The next option I tried is to use a motion sensor in the room to synchronize it with the lights in such a way that when it detects movement it turns on and off when it stops detecting it.
We have to take into account that motion sensors have some peculiarities that complicate the user experience.
Until the room is entered, the motion sensor will not detect and consequently it will not turn on the light, so the same experience could not be offered as in a non-automated room in which before entering the room the light comes on.
If the sensor is oriented so that it focuses on the door and thus covers that area, there is a risk that when the door is left open and someone passes by the light will turn on even if you do not want to enter, making inefficient use of energy.
A single sensor is difficult to cover all areas of a room. For example, in a bathroom, you probably have difficulty detecting the movement of a person bathing behind a screen or curtain. With which he will proceed to turn off the light.
Motion sensors only detect it when it is evident, not when it is mild, such as when in a bathroom you are cleaning your teeth or the like, which will proceed to turn off the light.
You can play with the time in which a motion sensor has to be detecting no movement to proceed to turn off the light, but normally a fixed value is not optimal.
If we put a short period like 15 seconds we will turn off the light very quickly, which is fine, but it is likely that someone is inside the room and it has not been detected, for the reasons we have mentioned above, which will proceed to turn off the light and we generate a very bad user experience.
If we put a long period such as 2 minutes we can reduce the situations in which we turn off the light with someone inside, but at the cost that when the person leaves the room the light is kept on during those 2 minutes, which is not acceptable with the requirement to use energy efficiently.
A single sensor does not provide sufficient reliability in a room with the characteristics we want to address. We need to use various sensors.