How to Use Smart Tech to Save on Your Light Bills
If you constantly argue with family members or roommates about turning off the lights when they leave the room, automation can help. It’s not a complicated thing either: you just use sensors to determine whether someone is in the room or not. When there is no activity, the light turns off.
Choosing the right sensor
To get started, you’ll need sensors, and there are two types to look out for. The first is a motion sensor, and that’s exactly what it sounds like. The second newer one is a presence sensor. The occupancy sensor can detect that you are simply relaxing in the room and not moving around it. If you were sitting quietly, reading or watching TV, the light should not go out in front of you.
Aqara, a company that makes everything from vibration sensors to water leak sensors, made waves last year with its FP2 occupancy sensor . It’s a small, articulated sensor that can be mounted on a ceiling or wall, pointed in a specific direction, then calibrated before using the AI for continuous learning. Depending on how you target it, it can either detect or rule out pets (or low-lying relatives, I guess).
Whether you use a motion detector or a presence detector, the basic automation remains the same: one to turn on the lights and another to turn them off if the test fails.
Setting the light to turn on when someone is in the room
For your first automation (I use Google Home), choose a home routine so you can use the device as a trigger. Select the appropriate sensor (here I’m using FP2). Select “Detects motion” and then go to the “Times and days” section. Consider whether these rules should always be followed or only during the daytime. If someone gets up in the middle of the night, should every room be lit as they walk through it? Set the time and days that are convenient for you.
Once you set this up, it will return to the previous panel and you can click “Add Action”. Click “Customize Home Devices” and you will now select the lights in that specific room. Perhaps it’s a lamp. connected to a smart plug or just a light bulb. Either way, find the device, then set it to turn on and click Save. If you have multiple lights in this room, you will have to add each of them as an action here in this automation, since each automation can have multiple triggers and multiple actions.
Another idea to consider is that if it is, say, 11:00 pm, you may want the lights to come on, but not to full brightness. If the smart bulb you choose supports it, you can turn the bulb on at 20% brightness in Actions.
Once all the actions have been added, it’s time to save the automation.
Setting the lights to turn off when someone leaves the room
To create a second automation that turns off the lights, you’ll do it all over again, but this time, under Triggers, select “When no motion is detected.” You should ask a follow-up question about how long the motion was not detected. So in the example below, you can see that I have it set to five minutes. After five minutes of no movement, the light turns off.
Set the conditions and days, select the same lights as before, but now tell them to turn off.
Testing and troubleshooting automation.
All that remains is to test the automation. Using the smart hub, turn off the corresponding lights. Now enter the space and see if they turn on. If they pass the test, leave the area and see if they switch off after the appropriate time has passed. You don’t need to be in the room to check, as this will disable the sensor: just check the status of the device in your hub.
If the light does not turn on, check the automation log and make sure the automation worked. If it works but the light does not come on, make sure the time and days are set correctly and you have selected the correct light and action. You can also check that the sensor is calibrated correctly.