Xiaomi Light Sensor - finally a new sensor?! Full walkthrough review [xiaomify]

Finally, there is a new sensor for the Xiaomi Smart Home Ecosystem! This time they have made a light sensor for smart home automation rules. Is that any helpful? Find the light sensor on: AliExpress: https://bit.ly/XMF_AE_XLSE
Gearbest: https://bit.ly/XMF_GB_XLS
BangGood: https://bit.ly/XMF_BG_XLS

The Xiaomi Light Sensor is a very small device that can be attached to a wall with a small sticker. It connects over Zigbee 3.0 to the Xiaomi Hub V3 (as well as the upcoming Aqara hubs that will support Zigbee 3.0) The light sensor can detect light values from 0 - 83000 LUX and that can be used for smart home automation rules.

It can be set up using the Xiaomi Mi Home APP. It's page interface us basically just a live view of the brightness in the room and it will just show you it's LUX-value. That lux value can be used for a whole number of smart home automation rules.

The easiest type of rule would be to use this value to turn a light on/off. An example of that is to turn the light on when the light sensor value gets below 150 lux and to turn the light off when the value gets above 150 lux. The downside and difficulty of this rule is that IF the light sensor actually catches the light of the light bulb you are automating that can cause problems. E.g. the light will turn on when the light intensity gets below 150 lux, but when the light is turned on that can cause the light sensor to detect the light to be above 150 lux, and you get into this vicious circle.

A better practice is to use the light sensor with the motion sensor. (Which is how I am using it)
You can use the value of the light sensor to enable/disable whole automation rules and this is a lot more interesting. So in this situation, you have a motion sensor set to turn lights on when it detects motion, but ideally, you don't want that to work during the day. So you can create an automation rule that turns off the whole automation rule of the motion sensor when the light value is above 150 lux and another rule that will enable the rule of the motion sensor when the light value is below 150 lux. This will simply disable the function of the motion sensor when it is bright enough, but enable it when it gets darker.

I used to have similar concepts by having a timespan for my automation rules but as some days it gets dark around 3 or 4 o'clock when it is dark and raining, but on other days it might be light until 8 in the evening. So using the light sensor is a much more flexible way of doing this than using the actual time of day.

It's quite complex to set up all your automation rules, but it will make them much more efficient once it's all set up.

I did have a little bit of a different output value when comparing it with another light meter. In the higher range (above 1000 lux+) the difference was quite big but in the lower range, they gave pretty much the same output. In the end that does not matter because you want to see what the average lux-value is in the room you are placing it when creating your automation rules.

Overall I am very excited to see a new (and functional) sensor for the Xiaomi Smart Home Ecosystem and it offers a lot of new options for automation. I'm happy.

#Xiaomi #SmartHome #XiaomiLightSensor

Видео Xiaomi Light Sensor - finally a new sensor?! Full walkthrough review [xiaomify] канала xiaomify