{"id":32424,"date":"2025-12-16T15:51:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/?p=32424"},"modified":"2025-12-16T15:51:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:51:24","slug":"the-only-smart-home-sensor-you-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/?p=32424","title":{"rendered":"The Only Smart Home Sensor You Need"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The FP300 uses a dual detection system that combines PIR and mmWave. This hybrid approach is designed to allow the device to detect even the smallest of movements in a room, unlike motion sensors, which are usually a bit heavy-handed. I tested the sensor in my home office, and with a motion sensor, I would need to wave my arms around like a mad man every so often to trigger detection. With the FP300, I could sit at my desk, making movements when I type and shift in my seat without worrying that my lights would turn off.<\/p>\n<p>The FP300 has a 120-degree field of view and can detect up to 6 meters out, which covers most average-sized rooms \u2014 but not larger ones. The sensor kicks in immediately when you enter a space, and you can adjust the sensitivity depending on the room. That kind of flexibility makes it work in bedrooms just as well as it does in living rooms, but with a 6-meter range, you might find that you need multiple sensors in homes with an open floor plan, for example.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond motion and presence, the FP300 also packs in light, temperature, and humidity sensors. That turns it into a central data hub for automations, if you&#8217;re willing to get a bit nerdy with them. You could create automations that combine conditions, like only turning the lights on when occupancy has been detected and the light is below a certain level \u2014 ensuring you&#8217;re not wasting energy on lights when there&#8217;s enough natural light in the room. Of course, you&#8217;ll need to use a service a bit more advanced than Apple Home to set these kinds of automations up.<\/p>\n<p>The FP300 is designed to be smart enough to know the difference between a person and other moving figures. It uses AI-based filtering so it doesn&#8217;t trigger when there&#8217;s a pet or robotic vacuum in the room, and it seemed to work well with my cat. I have seen some reports note that with a large enough pet, it may still trigger, but I can&#8217;t say one way or another if that&#8217;s true.<\/p>\n<p>The sensor isn&#8217;t smart enough to know how many people are in a room though. The FP2 is able to detect how many people are present, and if that feature is important to you, the FP300 won&#8217;t work for your needs. Most people probably don&#8217;t need that, though \u2014 they just need their smart home to know if a person is present at all.<\/p>\n<p>The battery-powered design is great for rooms where wired installation would be a pain, and the battery lasts long enough to where you might not feel like you&#8217;re making a major trade-off. I don&#8217;t love the look of an ugly wire running all the way down a wall. Aqara claims the FP300 has a two-year battery life when connected using Matter over Thread, or three years using Zigbee. I didn&#8217;t test the sensor for two years, so I wasn&#8217;t able to verify the battery claims. It runs on two CR2450 batteries, so you can easily replace them.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The FP300 uses a dual detection system that combines PIR and mmWave. This hybrid approach is designed to allow the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1081],"tags":[1143,1132,1136],"class_list":["post-32424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-sensors","tag-home","tag-sensor","tag-smart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smarthomecomplete.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}