Eve Motion - Apple HomeKit Smart Home Motion Sensor for Triggering Accessories and Scenes, White (Not Thread Enabled)

Hello,On a quest to get my home fully enabled with “smart” technology, I purchased my latest accessory the Eve Motion. I currently own the Eve Light Switch (Siri enabled light switch for my bedroom lights) and the Eve Energy (smart wall outlet adapter which I used for my Christmas tree lights schedule this last holiday season) and loved them, so I was looking forward to using the Eve Motion.Initially I purchased the product with a primary use case and intention of notifying me on my phone if our garage door was opened. We have young kids who have found the garage door opener more than a few times in the house and have “accidentally” opened the garage without us knowing. I figured this would be a good way to get notified when the door was opened when it was not suppose to be.Pairing the Eve Motion to the Eve App was just as simple as the other 2 Eve products. You snap a pic of the built-in QR code and then it automatically pairs. All my eve products show up nicely in the single App and I can configure them this way. I forgot that you had to go into the Apple Home iOS App to enable push notifications for the Eve and stumbled a bit on figuring this out (The Eve website reminded me that when I did a quick search).The product has 2 nice screw holes on the back and is very light weight, so I mounted it in the garage in a good location to catch the door opening. I think it is so light weight you could actually just hold it with Velcro, if you didn’t want to drill holes in the wall to mount it.I ran into a snag with this plan. Our garage is detached from the home and does not get Bluetooth range to it. Therefore while the Eve Motion was detecting the motion of the garage opening it, my iPhone was not able to get notifications.I decided to go to a backup use case and to place the Eve Motion in the house outside the 2 kids rooms. That way when they wake up in the middle of the night, to either go to the bathroom, try to get into the sweets, or go watch their iPads way before they should be up, I will get notified. As soon as I brought the Eve Motion in the house and it was in range of Bluetooth, all the push notifications started occurring.I am very pleased with this product am glad I found a secondary use case for it!

if you're considering using the Eve Motion to control another Homekit device like turning on a light for example, it's not a good solution. Frankly, it just doesn't work like you'd expect it to. I get notifications nearly 100% of the time on my IOS devices telling me that Eve Motion has detected motion. But most of the time, that's all that happens. Unless my IOS devices are active and not sleeping, the percentage of times when my connected devices are actually operated is zero. It may take 1 or more additional triggers of motion within a short time of the initial trigger to get the connected device to operate. I sometimes have to actually go into the Homekit app and just starting the app is usually enough for my IOS device to operate my connected device. I had heard that what I was planning to use Eve Motion for might not work well but I had to find out for myself. I'm giving Eve Motion 5 stars because it works great, it's Apple's Homekit that's the problem.

Product works as intended and has a nice aesthetic - a couple of minor issues prevented me from leaving a 5-star review though:- The build quality is not perfect: specifically the sensor lens was very easy to push out of place, which could only be fixed by taking the unit apart and pushing it back where it belongs. Not a dealbreaker but I expect better for $49.95- The associated Eve iOS app could use some improvement. It does everything it's supposed to do but the user interface is unnecessarily confusing and difficult to use, and as a result it took far longer to program than it should have. For comparison check out the iDevices app which is used to program their HomeKit products. Has largely the same functionality and is a breeze to use.- This may be an issue for Apple to address rather than Elgato, but this product cannot be fully programmed using the current version of the iOS Home app and you must use the Elgato Eve app, which is fine except for the UI issue mentioned above. The problem is that the iOS Home app currently only lets you indicate that motion has been detected (for example, to turn a light on) but does not let you indicate a "clear" status to turn the light off again.- The sensor uses AA batteries instead of a built-in rechargeable one, which may or may not be an issue depending on how long they last. The relatively new low-power Bluetooth standard is used, but if the batteries don't last many months then a built-in rechargeable battery would be appreciated. A built-in battery would also allow for a slimmer housing - as it happens the only reason the housing is as thick as it is is to accommodate the AA batteries.That said, if you're in the market for a HomeKit motion sensor I recommend this one. I don't think there are any other HomeKit motion sensors available yet, but once they start coming out this will be the one to beat.

I bought three different sensors for my HomeKit setup: this one, the less expensive Onvis sensor, and the Hue sensor. This one seems to "see" the farthest and react the quickest (it is fairly close to our Apple TV though). It's also the least attractive, but once you get used to where it's placed, it more or less disappears.Onvis and hue also worked well. I'd pick this one for a large room if you're within bluetooth range. I'd pick hue for a smaller room or if you want it hidden. I'd also pick hue if you're having bluetooth signal issues. Onvis also reacts quickly and sees fairly far, but ours had to be moved closer to the hub (AppleTV) to work consistently.