Suggestions for pet immune motion?


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Old 08-28-19, 06:53 AM
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Suggestions for pet immune motion?

Looking to add a motion sensor, the issue is I have a few cats running around he house.

The sensor would be looking down the long axis a rectangular room about 30 feet. There is a couch about 15 feet away from the sensor and a table about 5 feet away from the sensor.

Concern is cats jumping up on table and/or couch setting the sensor off. I was looking at a dual tech sensors and narrowed down to 2 models (open to other suggestions).
  • Honeywell Honeywell DT8035
  • Bosch ISC-BDL2-WP12G

Any thoughts or suggestions?




 
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Old 08-28-19, 10:47 AM
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Dual-tech motion sensors are a good approach to reducing false alarms from environmental factors like hot spots (heat registers), reflected sunlight, motion outside walls of coverage area, and a list too long to bother with. Duel-tech is not especially effective at tolerating actual motion in the protected area.

Good luck at finding a "pet-immune" motion sensor that will ignore "several cats" when they feel like being playful. Sorry to be a party pooper, but the phrase "pet-immune" was coined by a salesman, not an engineer; and it's misleading (read: bogus). There are "pet-resistant" or "pet-tolerant" sensors and sometimes they actually work to eliminate false alarms from pets, mostly by extensive signal processing, which is done much better with PIR signals than MW (microwave) signals. Dual-tech won't hurt, there may be other environmental factors in the room in question; but I don't know that it's actually any better for tolerating pets. You probably want to wait for other techs to weigh in on that.

Several cats that play together (usually at infrequent and seemingly random times) in an environment with vertical mobility is asking for a lot of tolerance from the motion sensor. I'm retired now and exceedingly glad I no longer have to try to fulfill on some salesman's promise of the capability of a system's magic.

All that being said: You're welcome to try any of the "Pet-Immune" Motions on the market. They have gone a long way at _reducing_ false alarms from pets. You might be lucky. Other techs may post in with more encouraging recommendations. I _have_ been retired and out of the mainstream of developments for the last ten years. I'll be watching this thread with interest.
 
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Old 08-28-19, 12:00 PM
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I thought the microwave part would ignore small changes a 15 pound cat would make... even if jumped up to a table/couch 4 feet in the air.

Think I will try the honeywell, I like you can turn off the look down. It's no issue to have that turned off in my situation, it would provide an intruder no advantage in trying to evade it.
 
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Old 08-28-19, 02:38 PM
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It's possible the MW part of a dual-tech will tolerate your 15-lb cat jumping 4 feet in the air, depending on several factors:

1. Distance/Elephant Syndrome: A small creature close up looks as big as an elephant at a distance. (In tropical climates, geckos crawling on sensor lenses are a real problem.)
2. Direction of motion: MW detects best when motion is toward or away from sensor. PIR detects best when motion is at right angles to line-of-sight of sensor.
3. Speed and duration of motion.
4. Cumulative input: A cat jumping up on something, and being chased by two other cats, creates greater motion signal input.
5. Probably something else I didn't think of off the top of my head.

I don't want to tell you not to try it; it might work. I just caution you not to be surprised if you get the occasional false alarm from that sensor.
 
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Old 08-28-19, 05:01 PM
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I no longer have a pet, but when we pet sit our daughters dog we just disable the motion detection. And I have it aimed high. I doubt the dog could trip it. But it's not worth the hassle. A motion activated cam would be a better choice.
 
 

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