Nodex PIR · for Home Assistant
A Panasonic PaPIRs element on a Wemos D1 mini, flashed with ESPHome. It reports to Home Assistant over your own network — no bridge, no battery to change, no cloud that can go quiet.
Built because Zigbee motion sensors kept missing people, or kept turning the lights off on them.
Nobody about.
Open config and over-the-air updates, with the whole configuration public so nothing has to be taken on trust.
The whole idea
“Did something just move?” and “is anyone still in here?” need opposite behaviour. Most sensors give you one number and make you bodge the other in an automation. This one gives you both.
Goes on the instant the element trips and clears again a few seconds after the last detection. That's what you want behind an alert, a camera snapshot, or a notification — a clean edge you can trigger on.
Use it for: alerts, doorway triggers, “someone's in the garage”.
Stays on for a couple of minutes after movement stops, and the timer restarts every time you so much as shift in a chair. It's the difference between a room that feels occupied and one that plunges you into the dark while you're reading.
Use it for: lights, heating, extractor fans, “is this room in use?”.
Both are ordinary Home Assistant binary sensors, so they work anywhere an entity works — automations, dashboards, history, the lot. Both timings are adjustable without touching the firmware.
Out of the box
It arrives flashed. There's nothing to install and no YAML to write unless you want to.
Any phone charger or spare USB port. It's mains powered, so there's no battery to replace in two years' time.
On your phone, join the WiFi network Nodex PIR Setup. A page opens by itself.
Choose your network, enter the password. It reconnects on its own.
A New device discovered notification appears. Click Configure and both sensors plus every setting show up at once.
Tuning it
All of these live under the device's Configuration section. Change them from the UI or from an automation — nothing needs re-flashing.
Besides blinking on motion, the on-board LED appears in Home Assistant as a normal light entity. Turn it on, off, or dim it from the UI or an automation — a quiet little status lamp, or off entirely in a bedroom.
In the ESPHome dashboard the device shows as discovered. Click Take Control to copy the config into your own ESPHome and change whatever you like.
Wiring it yourself? The PIR output goes to D0 (GPIO16); change pir_pin in the config if you put it somewhere else.
At a glance
Get one
Assembled and flashed in the UK, sold through our Etsy shop where you'll find the current price, photos and postage. If you've been meaning to try a local-first sensor, start here.
Questions before you buy? Email hello@tps505.com — you'll get an answer from the person who built it.