Review: Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 – multifunctional sensor

Automation Rules

The Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 really comes to life when you start automating. And then you really see what the sensor can do. A traditional PIR motion sensor only registers whether there is movement and is of course extremely limited. This sensor can trigger zone detection, presence, absence, presence with time stamp, absence with time stamp, leaving the room, entering from the left, entering from the right, falling and many more. The light sensor also plays a role, with a detected amount of light you also have several options. And you can therefore set a rule per zone, up to a maximum of 30 zones. It is important that you indicate on the grid where the corners of the room are exactly to increase the accuracy of the sensor.

Although we are very impressed with this sensor and it could just bring about a revolution, there are still a number of points that require improvement. For example, zone detection sometimes gets lost for a while. A single person can be easily recognized by the sensor, but it sometimes goes wrong with several people. You sometimes see five people suddenly appear on the grid in real time, but then you only walk through the room with the two of you. This is not the case with a single person, but it is still difficult to automate in this way. It seems that if the sensor loses a person for a while because someone else is in the path of the sensor, the sensor then copies and pastes the person behind when it is seen again, making it an extra person. The strange thing is that the non-existent people also just move around the grid.

You can also completely personalize the grid that the sensor ‘sees’. Not only in terms of detection zones, but also with stickers. For example, you can indicate where the couch is or, for example, the stove. You can enlarge these stickers slightly, but they are actually much too small to make a good map of your room. In addition, we miss the height. The sensor does see height, but you can’t do anything with it. All automations are horizontal (left right, far away, close by, etc.). Pets are also a hit-and-miss. And that also applies to very small children who are not always well seen. The fall detection is also too limited. The sensor has to hang from the ceiling and the radius is then really too limited at two meters. These limitations sometimes make it feel like the sensor is more of a prototype than an actual finished product. Admittedly, even at the moment there are already a huge number of applications that work well. And Aqara promises to add many more novelties such as sleep detection, body position, respiration rate detection and much more. Matter support is also coming. So it will really work out with the Aqara Presence Sensor FP2, we have no doubt about that. During the test period, we regularly saw new updates and bug fixes, but then you sometimes have the idea that you are dealing with a beta version.