[Discuss] Not L or U But at Least Techie...

[kentborg at borg.org (Kent Borg)]

On 3/17/25 5:46 AM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
> Come to think of it, you could even hook up a camera to send a picture. In
> fact, you may not need the infrared sensor at all, you could use the video
> camera and some motion detection software. There are a few available in
> raspbian.

A camera is what I am trying to replace, sort of.

Yes, it is extremely valuable to be able to see a picture, but motion 
sensing based on that picture can be far too twitchy, particularly when 
there is sunlight and wind and moving shadows. I try aiming the camera 
more and more narrowly and as I reduce the alerts (slightly) the picture 
becomes far less useful. But, if what I want to know about warm-blooded 
critters (including humans), a passive IR detector should be great.

So I decided to dip my toe into the world of Zigbee (which caught my eye 
years ago) as apparently made useful by Tuya (which I had never heard of 
until now). I have a couple of IR sensors that should arrive today (they 
run on a pair of AAAs supposedly for months and months). Tomorrow I 
should get a box that will both talk Zigbee to the sensors and talk 
ethernet to my local network, and on to the rest of the world.

I hope by some time tomorrow I will be able to let the cameras go ahead 
and collect too many images of motion, but not alert me on them, and 
instead have this stuff let me know when to look. It might even work 
well enough that I'll suggest my wife put the app on her Apple phone, too.

A key reason for choosing Tuya is, though it works with a variety 
proprietary smart home systems, it works with a VARIETY of proprietary 
smart home systems. It is not locked into one. And it seems to work with 
its own thing, Tuya. And there is also some open source thing called 
localtuya which supposedly makes it possible to not go through anyone's 
cloud at all. Supposedly. I haven't played with any of this yet.


-kb, the Kent who admires that Zigbee and Tuya and localtuya are all 
such silly names as to be easily searchable.