How to Set up a Philips Hue Motion Sensor. Philips hue motion sensor

How to Set up a Philips Hue Motion Sensor

The Philips Hue motion sensor is a frequently used accessory. By cleverly applying the motion sensor, manually switching your Smart lamps is unnecessary. Installing the Philips Hue motion sensor is as easy as Hue lighting. The ideal setting of the sensor differs per house. This is due to the incidence of light and the placement of the motion sensor. For example, you don’t want the sensor to turn on your lights when you have enough natural light. Or that your lights come on when no actual movement has taken place. Setting up your Philips Hue motion sensor is done from within the app and takes a little time. But once properly set up, you will always benefit from this. Read further to learn how to install a Philips Hue Motion Sensor

Install Philips Hue motion Sensor

Installing the Philips Hue motion sensor starts with unpacking the sensor and choosing the right location to mount the sensor. Because the sensor comes with a magnet, you can also choose a place that you would otherwise skip. Once you have chosen a spot, you can start installing the sensor. Install your Philips Hue motion sensor quickly by following the steps below:

• Place the sensor in the desired location
• Open the Philips Hue app
• Open the setting tab
• Select the accessories configuration
• Click on the add accessory button
• Select the correct motion sensor (hue motion sensor or hue outdoor sensor)
• Follow the further steps in the app

Philips Hue Motion Sensor �� ��. How to Change/Replace The Batteries

When you have successfully completed the Philips Hue motion sensor installation, you will find it in the accessory configuration under settings. Here you can further configure the motion sensor, give it a name or switch it on and off.

Set up a Philips Hue motion Sensor

You can adjust the settings of the sensor in the Philips Hue app. Within the app, you can select what should happen in which room when there is movement detected, define at how much daylight the motion sensor should switch on your Philips Hue lights, the time your lights should stay on, and how much motion needs to be detected. When you start setting up your motion sensor, it is important to know in which room you want to switch which lights when there is movement. If this is a combination of lights in several rooms, you should first create a zone for them. After creating the zone the easiest way to configure it to your needs is by creating a Philips Hue scene with the desired lights, colors, and brightness. You create the scene based on what you want to achieve when there is movement. After choosing the room and creating the scene, you proceed in setting up the Philips Hue motion sensor:

• Open the Philips Hue app
• Open the setting tab
• Select the accessories configuration
• Click on your desired motion sensor
• Select your room/zone
• Choose a time of day
• Select the scene to be activated when moving
• Determine the length of the scene activation
• Choose what to do when the time is up
• Click on save

You can set two time slots within the motion sensor settings. One for daytime and one for nighttime. This can be used to select two different scenes between certain times. For example, a night light if there is movement at night and a powerful lamp during the day.

Daylight sensitivity

Not only does the sensor detect movement, but it also detects the amount of daylight. For example, the sensor only switches on the linked lights if there is too little daylight after motion is detected. A great feature that prevents the lights from being switched on unnecessarily. You can set the sensitivity of the daylight sensor from within the “daylight sensitivity” setting in the Hue app. By sliding the slider up and down, the text in your screen above the slider will change based on the amount of daylight that the sensor receives at that moment. Here you can read exactly which sensitivity best suits the room.

Motion Sensitivity

If the linked lights switch on too easily, you can change the motion sensitivity. This setting can come in handy if the sensor is pointed at a window and turns on your lights when there’s movement outside. Just like with the daylight sensitivity setting, you can adjust this with the slider at the motion sensitivity setting.

Three times is a charm

In the hue app under “Discover”, you have the choice to use “Hue Labs”. In Hue Labs you will find various formulas that are not (yet) available for the official app. A kind of test room of hue functions that every Hue user can install. Here you will also find the formula “Three times is a charm”. When you install this formula, you have 3 time slots at your disposal instead of 2. This allows you to use the Philips Hue motion sensor a little more flexibly.

I hope you enjoyed this how to guide. If you have any problems setting up your Philips Hue motion sensor or just want to say something nice, please leave a comment! For other how to guides click here.

Hue Motion Sensor: The Ultimate Resetting Guide

Though Philips Hue usually works just fine, their motion sensor can sometimes get crippled with bugs or stop working. This problem can require you to carry out a quick reset procedure. This article takes a deep dive into the Philips Hue motion sensor.

It covers exactly what this Smart product is, explains why you’d want to reset it, and walks you through how to do just that, step-by-step. It also brings to your attention some fundamental indoor and outdoor reset differences as well as how to troubleshoot Zigbee vs Wi-Fi interference after resetting your Hue sensor.

What is the Hue Motion Sensor?

It’s an accessory device that automatically turns on your Smart lights when it detects human movements. For example, the product will turn your Smart lights on as you walk down the hallway or open a door and then turn the lights off again after some time when it no longer detects any movements. It also allows you to fine-tune and gain control over your Smart lighting conveniently.

There are many other cool ways in which you can use the Hue motion sensor. These include but are not limited to setting it to;

• Have your lights automatically turn on when you open the main door after reaching home when it’s dark.
• Have your cabinet lights automatically turn on when you open the cabinet doors.
• Activate your exterior lights when it detects human motion at night, potentially scaring away potential thieves.
• Turn on your safety lights such as those around your stairs and railings automatically at night.

This product is offered by one of the biggest names in the Smart home technology industry–Philips. The brand became overwhelmingly popular when it started releasing Smart lighting systems and accessories such as LED light strips and motion sensors.

The company designs these products to integrate seamlessly with Smart home apps like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s HomeKit, and Siri, as well as Google’s Smarthome app. It also makes sure that they work well with mainstream Smart home technologies such as Matter and other ZigBee products.

Why Would You Want to Reset This Sensor?

The Philips Hue motion sensor will occasionally require some quick factory reset to continue functioning reliably without any issues. Some common problems you can fix by undertaking this procedure include when the sensor has trouble pairing or isn’t communicating with other devices in the network.

Doing a quick reset may also go a long way when the app isn’t recognizing the sensor or when it’s having performance issues like not being sensitive enough or vice versa.

Types of Philips Hue Motion Sensors

Philips Hue offers two types of motion sensors; an indoor motion sensor and an outdoor one. The former is designed exclusively for indoor use whereas the latter is intended for outdoor purposes.

Notably, the steps for resetting both types of sensors vary slightly as shown below:

How To Reset Your Philips Hue Indoor Motion Sensor

• N/B: The setup button is recessed into a hole in the back of the device and the only way you can access it without trouble is by using a proper tool as we’ll show you in a bit. You’ll see the word “setup” next to where it is and therefore it shouldn’t be so hard to get to it, at least if you know how to read. That means you’ll need something like a screwdriver or paper clip to reach it. Don’t use a sharp object like a sewing needle as that may damage the button and the sensor.

How To Reset Your Philips Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor

The reset process for the outdoor motion sensors is similar, but has a few key differences:

• Step #1: Remove the motion sensor from your Hue app simply by deleting it. You can do that by going to SettingsAccessory SetupHue Motion Sensor and then tapping on the red Delete button below the screen.
• Step #2: Hold down the setup button for 10 seconds, or until the LED light on your sensor starts blinking orange from red, indicating that the sensor is reset and ready to pair again. N/B: Unlike the setup button for the indoor sensor that is recessed into a hole, this button is hidden behind the mounting bracket found at the back of the sensor. That means you’ll have to remove the bracket to get to it.
• Step #3: Close and relaunch your Hue app, returning to the Settings followed by the Accessory Setup menu you earlier went to.
• Step #4: Click “Add Accessory”, choosing the sensor you are trying to add.
• Step #5: Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the reset process.

Zigbee Clashes with Wi-Fi Signal After Sensor Reset ( How To Troubleshoot This)

Now, ZigBee is the wireless protocol that Hue Smart devices use to communicate. Interestingly, both Zigbee and Wi-Fi run on one GHz Band–the famous 2.4 GHz Band. However, each communication protocol runs on different radio frequency channels within the 2.4 GHz spectrum.

For example, Zigbee runs on sixteen different RF channels that are denoted by numbers; 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26. On the other hand, Wi-Fi runs on fourteen RF channels that are again denoted by numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14.

As you can see, Zigbee and Wi-Fi share some RF channels i.e channels 13, and 14. That means there can be some signal interference for your Hue devices if other devices are running on Wi-Fi.

Fortunately, you can fix this issue by changing the Zigbee channel of your Hue Bridge. You should select channels 15 and above, which are beyond Wi-Fi. Just go to your Hue app and follow the simple on-screen instructions to do that (go to Settings, ‘Hue Bridge’ or ‘Your Hue System’, then click Advanced Settings).

Final Thoughts

Philips Hue motion sensor is a cool sensor that automatically controls your Hue Smart lights perfectly. The company offers two kinds of motion sensors; the indoor sensor that is used indoors and the outdoor sensors that are intended for outdoor usage.

Both sensors can occasionally need resetting, especially if they become buggy. As you’ve seen, the reset steps for each sensor vary slightly and therefore users should know which reset steps their sensor requires.

After resetting your sensor, the device may run into some problems due to Zigbee vs Wi-Fi interference issues. The good news is that you can troubleshoot that problem by switching to the right Zigbee channel as explained above.

About James Beetie

James. a self-confessed nerd. has owned Smart home equipment for close to a decade, and he loves communicating the best ways of setting them up. and resolving the various bugs and issues that you’ll no doubt come across!

About James

Hello, I am James Beetie and I am a bit of a self-confessed nerd!

I like that Smart home technology makes it easier than ever to get news and weather updates, secure your home, turn lights on and off… and also have a disco with multi-colored Smart bulbs!

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Philips Hue Indoor Motion Sensor Review

Recently I posted a review of Philips Hue Outdoor motion sensor. Now it is time for a review of my new Philips Hue indoor motion sensor.

Review of Philips Hue Indoor Motion Sensor

It is time for another Philips Hue review. This time it is the Indoor motion sensor I have tested. Doing the cold and dark winter months we have in Denmark, light is nice to have. But why not turn the light on when needed instead of going and turn it on and off all the time. With the Philips Hue Motion sensor, you can automate light to turn it on, when needed and turn it off when there is no one needing it anymore. If you have small kids or teenage kids, that might not think much about electricity bills, this is also a nice feature to add to your Smart home. No need to ask your kids to remember to turn off the light.

The motion sensor is nice when nature is calling in the middle of the night or just practical in area where the family comes a lot, like the kitchen or a dark hallway.

Configuring and controlling the Hue Motion Sensor

Like any other devices from Philips Hue, the motion sensor is configured and controlled via the Hue app on your smartphone. Once you have discovered the device you can configure when and how you want your light to chance once the sensor is triggered. It is possible to make different time tables, meaning that you can have different light scenes depending on the time of the day. You can also select multiple rooms or zones if you want to trigger more than just a single device to turn on.

Pros and cons of Hue Indoor Motion Sensor

My first impression of the Motion Sensor was that it was smaller than I expected. That is only great if you ask me. It is nice that I don’t need a big white and shiny plastic box on my wall. The mounting system is also simple and flexible. A single screw in the wall and a magnet system makes me able to change the angle of the sensor until I found the right direction for the sensor to point. The sensor is powered by two AAA batteries (included), so no wires at all. One thing I do miss about the motion sensor is the ability to adjust that the sensor only should detect motion sundown and until sunset, like it is possible with the automatization. Maybe that is something Philips should work on.

Be aware that both indoor and outdoor motion detector requires a Hue Bridge.

Specification for Philips Hue Indoor Motion Sensor

• Requites two AAA batteries (Included)
• Requires a Hue bridge
• Works with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
• Wireless installation
• Color: White
• Operational temperature: 0°C – 40°C
• Dimensions:

• Height: 2.26 inch
• Length: 1.18 inch
• Width: 2.16 inch
• Weight: 65 g

Final words on Philips Hue Indoor Motion Sensor

Overall, I am very pleased with this product. It gets the job done, it is small and easy to install. What do you think? Please drop me a comment below.

Philips Hue Motion Sensor: Putting the auto in home automation

If you have Hue lights in your house, you’re going to want to check out the Philips Hue Motion Sensor — trust me.

This tiny white box solves one of the most annoying hurdles in home automation: that you need some sort of controller to interface with your devices (your voice for Siri, your finger for an app, a remote from the manufacturer, etc.).

Hands- (and voice-) free is the way to be!

I’ve unashamedly gone all-in on home automation, and one of the critiques I hear regularly from guests is “it’s much easier to flip a light switch than to use a phone.” Fair point — it’s one I’m reminded of every time we host someone and I have to give them a tutorial for controlling the lighting.

With the Philips Hue Motion Sensor in my home, I just have to to tell them not to worry about the tiny white box looking down from above, mwahahahaha! Kidding, I tell ’em exactly what it is and what it does.

I live in a two-floor home and chose to install the sensor at the top of my stairwell, just outside the bedrooms and bathroom. I have two Hue White bulbs installed in the ceiling light fixture. Whether I’m walking up or down the stairs — or walking from room to room upstairs — the sensor turns on my lights without me having to do a darn thing. Turns ’em off, too!

This GIF shows the lights dimming, turning off, and turning back on (thanks to my flailing):

Setup and customization

Setting up the Philips Hue Motion Sensor is pretty simple once you’ve figured out where in your house you’d like to install it. The sensor can sit on a shelf or table, or it can be mounted to a wall. Philips includes a small magnetic mount that you attach to the wall. Thanks to the magnetic design, you can turn, rotate, and pan the sensor on the mount.

Add the sensor to your Hue setup

Once you’ve figured out where you want it to go, you pull the plastic tab out of the back to activate the two AAA batteries (Philips says you can expect two to three years of battery life). Once the light begins to blink orange, you’re ready to add the accessory to your Hue setup.

• Open the Hue app.
• Head into Settings (looks like a gear in the top left corner).
• Tap Accessory setup.
• Tap the Add Accessory button (looks like a plus sign in the bottom right corner).
• Tap Hue motion sensor.
• Tap LED blinking to confirm the orange LED is blinking and begin the pairing process.
• Follow the on-screen prompts to choose the room and lights that your sensor controls.

Customize your Hue Motion Sensor

The best thing about the Hue Motion Sensor is its customization options. It’s meant to have more functionality than, say, a floodlight. In other words, it doesn’t stop at detects motion, turns on light — it does much more than that.

You assign the device to a room (or rooms) and can control the following settings:

• When motion is detected: This setting tells the sensor what to do when it senses motion. Philips gives you an option for both day and night, which I’ve found to be incredibly helpful. I set the light to a much dimmer setting at night so it doesn’t blast away my retinas.
• When there is no motion: This setting tells the sensor what to do when it no longer senses motion. It comes with a time setting and a light setting, so, for example, you can tell the sensor to dim the lights after two minutes of no movement.
• Daylight sensitivity: This setting adjusts the sensor’s sensitivity to light. It works on the assumption that if you’ve got enough light, there’s no reason to turn more on. So if you’ve got a bright, sunlit room, the sensor will stop detecting motion until the light levels drop below the level you set.
• Motion sensitivity: This setting adjusts the sensor’s sensitivity to motion. If you find your lights are turning on after a house fly soars past your sensor, you might want to decrease the sensitivity. My pets were constantly triggering the motion sensor so I dropped the sensitivity a bit.

Y u no HomeKit?

I’ve got one complaint regarding the Philips Hue Motion Sensor: It doesn’t work with Apple’s Home app or HomeKit.

When I first heard about this motion sensor, I had grandiose ideas of setting up multiple HomeKit automations. It’d be nice if a HomeKit-enabled fan, for example, could be activated when the device senses motion. There are ways to get similar automations in Apple’s Home app, but a direct link would be a nice addition for the device.

Bottom line

Ultimately, the Philips Hue Motion Sensor is quite honestly my favorite Hue product. I’ve got several Hue lights (color, ambiance, and white) and a Hue dimmer switch — the Motion Sensor is the first device I’m regularly and actively excited about.

Now when guests complain about the difficulty of pulling out a phone or using their voice to control my lights, I can smugly stomp up the stairs, my path lit before me.

Review: Weatherproof Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor Lets You Automate Your Indoor or Outdoor Lights

The Philips Hue line of lights have been controllable via an indoor motion sensor for some time, but Signify is today introducing an Outdoor Motion Sensor that’s designed to control the range of outdoor Hue lights that are now available for purchase.

The Outdoor Motion Sensor works just like the indoor Smart Motion Sensor, automating your lights and other HomeKit products to come on when motion is detected and turn off when there’s no motion detected, all on an automatic basis.

As with all Hue products, the Outdoor Motion Sensor is designed to work with a hub, so a Hue hub and Hue lights are required to use the product, even though it can interface with other ‌HomeKit‌ devices.

Design

The Outdoor Motion Sensor is small and relatively unobtrusive, but it does have a design that stands out somewhat, so it’s not entirely unnoticeable. It features a square-shaped plastic housing with a protruding white circle where daylight and motion sensors are built in.

At the back, Outdoor Motion Sensor features a mounting plate and a variety of mounting options so you can put it wherever it works best. There’s an option for a flat wall or mounting it at a corner, which would allow for maximum view of a driveway, lawn, or entryway.

I live in an apartment so I’m not able to do wall mounting, but I’m including this image of the Outdoor Motion Sensor from Amazon to show the different ways that it can be mounted.- flat, on an inward corner, or on an outwards-facing corner. For testing purposes, I have tall shelves outdoors where I keep plants, which is what I used, so it also doesn’t necessarily need to be permanently mounted to work well.

You can screw the Outdoor Motion Sensor into the wall outside, and the hardware that you need is included (wall brackets, screws, and screw plugs), making it simple to get up and running. There is a built-in battery inside the Outdoor Motion Sensor that’s supposed to last for about two years, so you don’t need to worry about charging it. It’s using AA batteries, so when the included batteries are exhausted, it won’t be a hassle to get a replacement.

The casing of the Outdoor Motion Sensor is IP54 water resistant, so it can hold up to rain, snow, and other bad weather, though you won’t want to submerge it.

Functionality

The motion sensing feature in the Outdoor Motion Sensor can detect movement from up to 39 feet away, which is a longer range than the indoor sensor. I wasn’t able to test the full range, but set up and tested both indoors and in my backyard, it was able to reliably detect my movement close up and as far away as 25 feet.

The Outdoor Motion Sensor’s lens features a 160 degree field of view, which is similar to something like a fisheye lens, meaning it can take in quite a lot of the landscape in front of it. The lens has also been designed to detect movement directly below it with an 80 degree vertical view, limiting blind spots.

You need to connect the Outdoor Motion Sensor to a Philips Hue hub and Philips Hue lights, so while it works from 39 feet away, it needs to be close enough to the hub or a Hue light to function.

The Outdoor Motion Sensor can work with indoor or outdoor lights from Hue (and with other ‌HomeKit‌ lights). It’s useful for lighting up the outdoor area when motion is detected, but it’s also handy for turning on the lights inside when you get home from work or when someone approaches. If you’re not home and have the lights inside come on automatically with motion detection, it has the potential to be a good theft deterrent.

There are actually a few different sensors built into the device. It can detect motion, obviously, but it also has a daylight sensor inside so it can tell the difference between day and night. This allows you to customize the actions that happen based on the amount of light the sensor is detecting. It’s also able to detect the ambient temperature, which is a nice bonus feature.

App and HomeKit

The Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor can be viewed and managed either by the Hue app or with the Home app, and which you choose will depend on how you want to use it. If you want to use it exclusively with Hue products, the Hue app works well, but if you want to use it with other ‌HomeKit‌ devices, the Home app is the better choice.

In the Hue app, you can choose the Motion Sensor’s behavior by day, by night, and set what should be done when it either detects motion or does not detect motion.

For example, you can turn the Outdoor Motion Sensor off entirely during the day and then after sunset, set it to turn on the lights whenever motion is detected, which is probably behavior most people will use it for.

You can also have the lights turn off after a set period of time when no motion is detected, so the lights can come on for anywhere between 1 and 60 minutes when motion is detected and then turn off afterwards automatically.

The Outdoor Motion Sensor is ideal for automating your outdoor lights to make sure there’s always light when you’re outside in the evening and to potentially scare off burglars or other malicious people who might be near your house. You can also set the Outdoor Motion Sensor to control the indoor lights, so you can, for example, have it turn on the inside lights as you approach the house if you don’t have outdoor Hue lights for it to work with.

In the Home app, you can use the Outdoor Motion Sensor in ‌HomeKit‌ Automations as a trigger, which allows it to work with non-Hue ‌HomeKit‌ devices as well as Hue devices. This is the only way to set up automations that involve other ‌HomeKit‌ products as the Hue app limits you to control with Hue lighting scenes.

You can also view the Outdoor Motion Sensor in the Home app, where it displays the current brightness of the room in lux and the temperature as add-on features. Both of these readings can be seen in the Home app exclusively and are not available in the Hue app.

I prefer using the Home app to manage the Outdoor Motion Sensor because what it’s doing is a bit more clear and I can create more specific Automations. For example, between 5pm and 6pm, I can have the Outdoor Motion Sensor turn on both my indoor and outdoor lights when it detects motion, activating the indoor lights at the specific moment when I get home at night. A separate Automation can be set for the night time that will turn off the lights when no motion is detected or turn on the lights when it is detected.

Philips Hue Motion Sensor Setup (and Configuration)

Between both of the apps, there’s quite a lot of granular control over how the Outdoor Motion Sensor works, so it should fit almost any use case. I suspect most people will want to use it specifically to control outdoor lights without complicated Automation setups because indoor lighting can be controlled via indoor motion sensing options.

You will want to pick one app or the other to use so there aren’t conflicting and confusing automated options set up. Writing about it makes it sound complicated, but in reality, automating the Outdoor Motion Sensor’s behavior takes just a few minutes once you know just what you want it to control.

If you don’t want the Outdoor Motion Sensor to control your lights at any time, it can be disabled within the Hue app. The Hue app also has options for adjusting the sensitivity of daylight and motion detection to fine tune how and when it’s activating your lights. You can, for example, turn down the motion detection sensitivity if it’s often activating due to moving tree branches or animals passing by, or turn it up if your lights aren’t coming on when motion is detected.

As for Siri, you can ask questions about motion detection, light level, and temperature. Other than that, there’s not a lot that can be done with the Outdoor Motion Sensor using voice, because it’s mostly meant to be used for automation rather than interaction.

You’re also able to set up notifications that will let you know if and when motion is detected using the Home app so you can get alerts when you’re away from home.

Bottom Line

If you need a HomeKit-enabled motion sensor that’s going to be able to stand up to being outside, the new Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor is an excellent choice.

It’s not overly expensive, the motion sensing and daylight detection features work reliably, and it gives you a quick, easy way to automate your outdoor (or indoor) lights so you don’t have to think about them.

Sensors are a great addition to ‌HomeKit‌ and the Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor can mimic the behavior of traditional outdoor lights that have motion-based activation features.

How to Buy

The Hue Outdoor Motion Sensor can be purchased from Amazon.com or from the Hue website for 49.95.