Has anyone tried to use VMBPIR-20 module for motion detection of small animals? I want to use it as a “cat detector”. It will be used in much closer distance than the max 5 m from the specification, but the “object” obviously is much smaller. I assume that for a PIR sensor the important part is the angular size of the object being detected, so if I keep the sensor close to the cat 
it should work as expected?
Does your cat (I assume it’s your cat your trying to detect) wear a collar?
Would a small Bluetooth beacon be a better option?
What are you trying to achieve?
Google search for
cat ble beacon tags
https://www.google.com/search?q=cat+ble+beacon+tags
This is a bit wild, but might be an idea
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The cat is chipped and I know I can get a cat door that works with that chip. No collar, so the RFID is not an option.
I’m trying to automate ventilation of the litter box area (1m x 1m shaft with an extract fan in the ceiling) . I already have the extract fan controlled by velbus. Now I want to start it and keep it running for 30 min after there is any activity in the litter box. Showing notification “Human, clean the box!” on TV will be done by openHAB.
I’ll hook up the sensor to the velbus network and see how does it react to the cat passing by. 
Arrrr
A litter tray you say…
Could you put a simple pressure switch under it and connect to a VMBIN or a channel of a VMBxIN ?
But, I can’t see a reason why a closely positioned VMBPIR-20 wouldn’t work
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Nope… the tray might be half full or half empty with the cat sand (approx 6 kg of difference). A fancy solution would be a weight scale with local reset button to set it to 0 after every cleaning.
I hope to test the PIR soon…
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I got the PIR detector connected, address set… and in the VelbusLink I see the Motion, Light Dependant Motion, Absence, etc but in openHAB I only see Alarms and CH1 to Ch7 (inputs). Is the binding fully developed? Or it’s my local error / problem?
I have enough knowledge to dig into that, but I just wanted to make sure it’s supposed to be there (i.e. maybe I missed some configuration in VelbusLink)
I use openHAB 4.3.2 Release Build and velbus bindind 4.3.0 from jar file:
openhab> la -l | grep -i vel
START LEVEL 100 , List Threshold: 0
248 │ Active │ 80 │ 4.3.0.202410011027 │ file:/usr/share/openhab/addons/org.openhab.binding.velbus-4.3.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
Should I update it? Or remove and use the one provided with OH 4.3.2?
The rest of the velbus ecosystem works fine in openHAB
PIR devices are basically the simple 8 channel profile.
You’ve got the triggers showing.
Consider the channel numbers, rather than look for names.
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I’m probably over-thinking a simple problem. Can I set up OH so it shows me when the motion detector detects something? I’m going to trigger the start of extract fan in Velbus anyway, but I’d like to see the detected movement in OH as well. I tried to add new items (toggle switches) linked to the channels, but they don’t seem to show any activity. I created points from the channels - no activity.
Side note: I don’t see any activity on vmb7in either. I use it for electricity consumption - all works fine within the Velbus system. The counters are OK in OH, showing the values as expected, but the input channels - all show NULL
P.S. I backported the latest Velbus code to the version 4.3.2, so maybe I broke something… I-m investigating that now…
