The TUYA platform is brilliant because there are a massive range of devices that tap into this smart home network which allows you to get budget end smartphone products to work together. In our TUYA PIR Motion Sensor Review we share our thoughts on the £20 smart motion sensor and how you can use it to automate more devices in your smart home.
What is a smart motion sensor?
Put simply, a smart motion sensor detects motion (and a lack of motion). Most have a range they cover (typically around 120 degrees) and you can use the motion sensors to trigger anything in your smart home from lightbulbs to just receiving alerts. This makes the motion sensor great for everything from home automation to home security.
Features of the TUYA PIR Motion Sensor
THE TUYA Motion sensor has a few features it’s worth highlighting:
- TUYA Support – This means it can be used with the TUYA, Smart Life and Hey! I’m Home apps
- ZigBee support – Allowing you to use it with a wider ranger of smart home devices
- Integration with Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT and Siri Shortcuts (depending on the app you use with it)
- 120 degree motion sensing angle
- 1 Year battery life (when you use it 25 times a day) – Taking 2 AAA batteries
- Comes bundled with a stick-on pad for mounting
- Finally, it retails at just under £20 making it half the price of the Philips Hue motion sensor.
Setting Up the Motion Sensor
Setting up the TUYA Motion Sensor is nice and easy and the process is pretty much the same regardless of your app.
Once setup you then simply receive a notification when motion is detected (you can turn this off) and that’s it if you want to just use the device for a home security purpose.
TUYA PIR Motion Sensor Review – Setting up Scenes
If you want to get the most out of the PIR motion sensor then you’ll want to set up some scenes in the app.
A scene allows you to trigger something based on the status of the motion sensor and the TUYA app (which is our preferred app over the Hey! I’m Home and Smart Life apps) let’s you do that.
The scenes in the TUYA app are split into two parts…an IF part and a THEN part.
The IF part is where you configure what the trigger is. The best example for our review is ‘IF the motion sensor triggers motion’. You can also add more than one trigger e.g. IF it’s daytime and the motion sensor triggers motion.
The THEN part tells the app what to do when this trigger happens. For example if the motion sensor detects motion you can turn on your bathroom light. Again, you can have more than one THEN so you could turn on a whole variety of devices.
With the motion sensor you can even turn things off when no motion is detected.
Finally, you can set effective periods (e.g. times/days of the week) for your screen.
This is a great way to do things like automatically turn on a bathroom light at night when motion is detected and, a smart light means it can be nice and dim at night so it doesn’t disturb your sleep too much.
How well does the TUYA Motion Sensor work?
In using this for a few weeks we found that it worked well every time. As the device and your phone rules (e.g. the If and then options) connect to WIFI triggers happen quickly and we found it detected the motion we expected it to…we mounted ours on the ceiling in the bathroom and found it had a good range and covered the whole room.
The only downside is that unlike the Philips Hue sensor it can only detect motion whereas the Hue sensor also has a daylight and temperature setting allowing you to more easily only trigger based on the actual light levels in the room.
