Every smart home is different. There’s a level of buy-in that will completely transform your home into a smart one. But you can also dabble in smart home devices and make a few things simpler in your everyday life.

When I bought a home, I started by adding more smart home devices to my ecosystem and making the devices able to connect to one another. However, there was one product that I tried multiple times to get right, but I never really could. Even when I did get one of them to work well, I realized that I didn’t need to be as technologically advanced for it to mean something. Here’s why motion sensors have never really done much for me.

They can be difficult to set up

Some of them require other gadgets to work

As a tech writer for years, I’ve been able to review many smart home products. I tested three motion sensors over my time, as well as installed my own Ring Floodlight Cam, which has a motion sensor.

The Meross MS600, Govee Outdoor Motion Sensor, and the Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2 are all motion sensors that I’ve tested, each with varying success. The more I tried to make each of them work, the more I realized I wasn’t sure why I was doing what I was doing.

There are some very cool ways to integrate your motion sensors into your smart home. For example, if you have a light sensor that is facing out a window, you can potentially set it to detect the sunrise and have it trigger an automation to draw your smart curtains. You can also make that light detection trigger a smart plug to power on, turning on a coffee machine or tea kettle.

This would be an ideal way to utilize them if you wanted the same routine every day. But I never found the motion sensors as easy to set up as I’d hoped.

Some of them were more sensitive than others, meaning even the slightest flicker of light would trigger their activation. This included a neighbor of mine driving into their driveway at night, and the sensor picking up the headlights and thinking it was the sunrise. For the Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2, you needed an Aqara hub for it to work at all, and there was no way to control it with voice commands through Amazon Alexa, which is the home ecosystem of my choice.

Unlike a camera, where you can look at the feed and see what it’s facing, setting up a motion sensor is a bit of an inexact science. You may have to put it somewhere, then walk in front of it at different distances to see how well it picks you up. Many motion sensors these days will send notifications to your phone or tablet to alert you that someone is moving past your device. If you aren’t getting those notifications when you’re walking in front of it, it can cause more issues than it’s worth, spending hours exacting this.

Control is an entirely non-universal thing

I wouldn’t suggest mixing brands

If you’re going to invest in a smart home ecosystem, it makes sense to stay on brand with your devices. Now, many of them support either Thread, Zigbee, or Matter connectivity, so you do have some wiggle room in terms of choosing your devices. But some may only work with manufacturer-loyal items.

For example, the Govee Outdoor Motion Sensor could only be controlled through the Govee app. If I wanted to adjust anything about the motion sensor, it had to be done through the app. My biggest reason for using that motion sensor was to work with Govee outdoor lights. They worked fine enough, but if I wanted to adjust anything about either of them, I had to do so through the Govee app.

I’ve adjusted the sensitivity for the sensor multiple times, and it still feels like it has a hair trigger.

Now, I recognize that not many people would use different ecosystems and motion sensors throughout their house. As someone testing products, it’s a bit of a unique situation. You’re more likely to stick with one company if you find success with that. But I haven’t found a motion sensor that I wanted to stick with yet, regardless of compatibility.

The motion sensors tend to be too sensitive

You can adjust them, but it doesn’t always work well

I genuinely do like the Ring Floodlight Cam Plus because it gives me a look at a large portion of my backyard. I got this version because the lights in my backyard when I moved in were weak and didn’t offer much coverage. Having motion sensor lights is a good idea, in principle.

What I’ve found with the Floodlight Cam is that any kind of motion sets it off. It’s particularly windy where I live, and the covers on the outdoor furniture tend to ripple a bit. Anytime there’s even a faint ruffle due to wind, the light comes on. I’ve adjusted the sensitivity for the sensor multiple times, and it still feels like it has a hair trigger.

I’ve asked my neighbors behind me if they are bothered by our spotlight going on at random times throughout the night. They’ve assured me that they aren’t, but I still always worry about it. Now, we had a fox recently going through the backyard, and that rightfully set off the light. So it does pick up things I want it to, but I also wish it would be less sensitive.

Strangely, my biggest issue with the Govee Outdoor Sensor is that it’s not sensitive enough. Anytime I tried to have it automate the lights, it was either severely delayed or didn’t work at all. The test I used was walking in front of it from different ranges. Only occasionally did it actually work.

Your Wi-Fi has to be excellent for it to work well

You may need more upgrades than you thought

Depending on where you want your motion sensor to live, you need to ensure that the network signal is strong in that area. If it isn’t, you can almost certainly forget having the sensor work the way it’s supposed to.

I tried the Aqara Motion and Light Sensor P2 in my bedroom, which is as far away from my router as you can get in my home. It took a long time to get it hooked up, and only after I moved the Aqara Hub M2 upstairs did it really start to work. Even then, the connection was always a bit faint, and it rarely actually opened the smart curtains like I had wanted.

It doesn’t matter which manufacturer you use when it comes to a motion sensor. If you have a weak Wi-Fi signal, you’re going to struggle to make the sensor actually be worth using. This may cause you to upgrade your Wi-Fi or invest in a booster. While some may say this is something that is inevitable if you have dead zones, you may not have needed to do it if you didn’t want to set up the sensor.

Motion sensors haven’t been worth it for me

I’ve had the privilege of trying out different motion sensors in my home. I think the idea of having them automate different smart gadgets in your home is great. Being alerted when someone walks in front of one also provides security benefits. However, I have yet to find one that does both of these things well and is easy to control. Other than my wired-in Floodlight Cam, I don’t actually use the other motion sensors that I have. They have been more of a headache than anything.