Activity detector

[Adrian Hudson]

EDIT: Ignore this post. Apologies. A simple PIR should do what I want. Rapid sell loads.

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I want to detect "activity". Activity would be someone moving past a detector of some sort. Activity would also count as someone turning a light off in the room.

Basically, what I am doing is designing a heating controller and one of the functions would be to turn the heating off if there has been no activity in the house for (say) 24 hours i.e. I have gone away and forgotten to turn the heating off.

The timer would be reset by any sort of activity as described above - someone being detected in the room or a sudden increase in brightness e.g. a light being turned on.

So far, I have thought of an LDR and monitoring for sudden (less than 1 second) changes in brightness.

Can anyone think of a better sensor or mechanism for detecting if there is someone in the house?

Thanks!

 

[DamonHD]

It's not totally trivial, though a PIR is probably the best simple solution.

Have a look here under "Occupancy/Activity Sensing Ideas":

https://sourceforge.net/p/opentrv/wiki/Hardware/

Rgds

Damon

PS. Note that the OpenTRV project shares some aims with you, BTW!