Smart Home Automations Just Got Even Better (Aqara FP400 Presence Sensor

Just over three years ago, Acara released the FP2 presence sensor. It was, at the time, unlike any smart home sensor I've ever used. Since then, they've also released the FP300, an incredible wireless presence sensor. And now, they have finally released the highly anticipated FP400. This one here has Matter over Thread support, ZigBee support, support for zones, multiple people tracking, and much more. We're going to get into all that today. This is, in many ways, a new version of the FP2 sensor that they already released, but there are some nuances and differences you probably want to be aware of when deciding if this sensor is right for you. Welcome. My name is Shane, and this channel is all about building out a smart home in the Apple home ecosystem. Subscribe for new videos and live streams every week right here, all about smart home tech. A big thanks to Acara for sponsoring this video and sending me out their FP400 sensor prior to the official release so I could try it out and share everything with you. Now, as you can see on the box, the FP400 supports all the major smart home ecosystems, including Matter. It has multi-zone positioning. It has a built-in light sensor support for ZigBee, as well as Thread, plus AI learning and adaption. Inside, we have some documentation. The sensor itself, it's pretty much the same form factor as the original FP2. Same style magnetic mount with the status LED on the top and the button on the bottom. You get a USB-C to USB-A cable, a sticky pad, metal plate, and a screw for mounting. Plug it in to set it up in the Acara app, and it'll automatically recognize the device nearby. And the first time you use it, you'll have the option to choose which wireless protocol you want to use, either Thread or ZigBee. So this is very much like the FP300 in that sense, if you've used that one. It does support Thread out of the box, so if you want to use ZigBee, you'll have to switch it over. And that's what I'm going to do here. I'll explain why in a minute. Now this will take a minute or two. You can switch the protocol in the future at any time if you want, but that does require repairing the device from scratch. You do have to have an Acara hub if you want to use it in ZigBee mode. So I'll choose the Acara hub that I want to pair it to. For me, that's the Acara N3 hub. Name the device. It's going to give you some guidance for installing it, and then you're all done with the pairing. Now before we move forward and discuss installation and all that stuff, let's discuss whether you should use Thread or ZigBee, and maybe what are the differences. If you use Thread, you will need a Thread border router in your home, like an Apple TV or a HomePod, or any other Thread border router for whatever smart home ecosystem you're using. Again, it does use Thread out of the box, and the reason for that is so you can directly connect it over Matter to any smart home ecosystem that you're using, again right out of the box. You don't even need to use the Acara app if you don't want to. But if you do that and you use the Thread protocol, you will miss some of the little bonus features that you can get when you are using it over ZigBee. When you pair the sensor over Thread directly to your smart home, the FP400 exposes only one overall present sensor and one light sensor. Now that said, if you've done this, you can still use the Acara app, even if you're not using an Acara hub, to configure custom zones, detection sensitivity, and the absence confirmation period, or the timeout period. Once configured, the FP400 can be exposed to your third-party Matto ecosystems as one whole area occupancy sensor, plus up to eight custom zone occupancy sensors and that light sensor. And again, that is using Thread without an Acara hub. You just have to have your phone and the FP400 connected to the same local network to configure this in the Acara app. I know that's all a little bit confusing, so if you need any clarification on anything, drop a comment down below and I'll do my best to respond. But it's really cool that we can use this over Thread and even take advantage of zones using Thread without an Acara hub. Now to access the full functionality, you will need an Acara hub and you will need to put it into ZigBee mode. So I switched mine to ZigBee mode so we could try out those features and use it to its full potential. Plus, I just honestly prefer using ZigBee over Thread for devices like this when given the option. I do have a few other Acara devices like their light switches and other sensors that support both Thread and ZigBee and I just always choose ZigBee over Thread again when I had the option just because I do have an Acara hub and ZigBee just always works great for me here in my home, so that's what I'm going with. All right, enough about protocols, let's talk about installation. As with any present sensor, placement in my opinion is the key to getting reliable performance from your sensor. You can install the FP400 on a wall, in a corner, or on a ceiling. On a wall, they recommend a height between 1.5 and 2 meters or about 5 to 6.5 feet. This should be the ideal height to balance standing and seated detection. For more coverage, they recommend a higher placement, you know, around that 2 meter mark. You can mount it in the middle of a wall or in a corner, like I said. A corner installation is going to be best to make full use of the 120 degree detection angle, eliminating blind spots on both sides in front of the sensor that you would get if you mounted it in the middle of a wall, let's say. They say this also provides more even detection coverage and reduces missed detections, but if you have a really large space, mounting it in the center is going to give you the most distance. You will just get those blind spots in the front corners if you mount it in the center of a wall. I did do all my testing mounted in corners because it still gives me plenty of distance to cover my rooms that I tested it in, and it eliminates any blind spots and just should get the best readings that way. It does have an IPX5 rating, which means it's splash resistant and should be fine in humid indoor environments like bathrooms or kitchens. You'll specify in the app the mounting style, either wall, corner, or ceiling, and you're also asked to specify the height at which it's mounted. Then you can set your detection zones. I really like how they've done this. To me, this is just brilliant. It's so cool. You just hit setup and begin walking around the border of your room or your detection area. You can fine tune it and then you're done. You can also utilize the AI spatial learning feature to improve the sensor's detection, and that's really it for the initial setup. Now at this point, the sensor is detecting presence within your defined space as well as the light levels. From there, you can modify the map by adding furniture, entry and exit points, interference sources, which that would be, you know, objects with continuous micro movements that you might want to, like, ignore or filter out, like a fan or a plant, something like that. And of course, we can now set up our detection zones. So here in my studio, I set up zones for watching TV or gaming that consist of my chairs and the couch back there, and then I set up a zone for my desk over here and another zone just in the middle of the room that I'm using just for, like, testing purposes. This creates separate occupancy sensors for each zone that are then exposed to your smart home ecosystems through Matter. Since my Aqara Hub is already paired to Apple Home and even Homey, those sensors are automatically available in those apps for me to use in my automations. Here you can see my ceiling light changing color as I move throughout the different zones that I set up here in the studio. It works really well. I also tested it in my garage for a while and set up separate zones for each of my workbenches. I actually have Aqara light strips installed over each workbench, and with these zones set up, I can have the light strips turn to a bright white automatically when someone gets close to the bench. And when I back away from the bench, it'll turn the light strip back to my accent color, which I'm using like a blue here. You can see it works extremely well, very responsive. I really like this. I think this is where I'm going to be using my new FP400 moving forward permanently. I really like the workbench lights to be like a blue accent color in the garage, but obviously it's really nice to have them turn white when I'm actually standing there or when I'm working on something. The sensor also does a great job at picking me up as I walk down the stairs, which automatically turns on the overhead can lights underneath my loft. And then, as mentioned, those separate zones for each workbench will turn the lights white or back to blue, depending on if I'm close to them or not. Something like this can only be done using zones, unless I'm using multiple sensors placed around the garage. You can adjust the monitoring settings, including the detection direction, presence detection sensitivity, sensing distance, and the absence confirmation period. The absence confirmation period is like a timeout period. This is how long the sensor will show as occupied, once presence is no longer detected. I really like that you have the ability to change this for each zone, so they don't all have to actually be the same. You can also enable some advanced functions. Again, I do believe you have to be using it in Zigbee mode to access this. Now, current count will allow the sensor to keep count of how many people are in the room, and the AI enhanced person detection uses AI algorithms to identify vacuum cleaners, pets, and other moving objects as interference targets to reduce false triggers. We'll talk about that in a second. So far, the performance for me has been very good as a whole. You can see the responsiveness, how well it worked with those zones and everything that I showed you. Now, like the original FP2, the general presence detection and the zones have just been working great. Like any presence sensor, installation and placement is key. It did take some tinkering and fine tuning. I did spend some time with it just to get everything dialed in and working well. Once I did that, my automations have been working great. As expected, it does a very good job at detecting presence, even when I'm being very still, like sitting here at my desk or sitting in the chair gaming and stuff like that. Now, let's talk about some of those new AI features and how those work for me. As far as the person counter goes, this actually worked pretty well in my limited testing. A card documentation does state that a small deviation is normal due to overlapping points between multiple targets or people obstructing each other from the radar. If two people are close to each other, the algorithm might not be able to distinguish them as separate people. So, you know, just something to keep in mind. That kind of makes sense if you think about how millimeter wave radar actually works. Again, just something to keep in mind. But this did actually work really well for me, even here in the studio, like with two people sitting right next to each other on the couch. It still did a good job at recognizing there were two separate people sitting right next to each other on the couch. You can create automations in the Acara app that'll trigger when a certain amount of people are counted and different things like that. Now, I haven't really thought of any automations to utilize something like this. So if you have any ideas, definitely let me know in the comments down below. Now, as for the AI enhanced person detection, that new feature that's supposed to be able to filter out things like robot vacuums, pets, etc. I'm not 100% sold on this one just yet. When I first tested it, it did detect my dogs as people and even the robot vacuum at times, even with this feature enabled. So this did seem to work better when I installed the sensor at a higher location. So I changed it and moved it higher, probably just like over six feet is where I moved it to. Once I did that, it did not detect my robot vacuum anymore, which is great. It did still sometimes get a little confused between myself and my dogs and it might would like take a second or two to determine if I was actually a person, which could be a problem if it misidentifies a person, then your automations wouldn't run like you'd expect them to. I'm not sure if there's some sort of like AI learning capability with this that could get better over time. And I will say it probably will work better with smaller pets, I would assume, since it did better with my robot vacuum. But I have medium sized dogs and it would get a little confused sometimes with those. These advanced features in the app are labeled as lab options, which I guess means they're still under development. So maybe that's something that will get better over time. And again, maybe the AI will learn and also get better that way. I don't know. I'm probably just going to keep this off for now. That way, it will be 100% sure that I'm a person as far as recognizing me in the garage moving around. So my automations are reliable. Now, you may be wondering what differentiates this sensor from the other Acara present sensors like the original FP2 or the newer FP300. Again, I look at the FP400 sort of like an update to the FP2. The biggest difference is probably that this one supports Zigbee and Thread, whereas the FP2 connects over Wi-Fi. And to my knowledge, that one never gained official MatterSupport. Of course, it still did work natively with Apple Home. But if you're someone who uses various or multiple smart home ecosystems like Homey or Home Assistant in addition to Apple Home, then you'll probably want the FP400. And like I said earlier, I just would rather have a sensor connect over Thread or Zigbee than Wi-Fi. Just my personal preference. That is a big improvement for me. The other big difference to take note of is that the new FP400 does not support fall detection or sleep monitoring like the FP2 does. So if that's something you need, you will want to look at the FP2 instead. And then, of course, we have the FP300. And the main difference there, of course, is that this one is completely wireless, but it does not support zones. The FP300 also does include a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor, as well as the presence and light sensor. Both the FP300 and the FP400 support Matter over Thread or Zigbee. So personally, if I needed just a simple present sensor and didn't really need multiple zone configurations and stuff like that, I'd probably go with just the FP300 because placement is just going to be much easier with the wireless sensor. But if you do need support for zones and all that kind of advanced stuff, then the FP400 is my new favorite. The most difficult thing with a sensor like this, the new FP400 or even the FP2, is probably placement. They do have to be connected to an outlet at all times. And because good placement is so important for accurate presence detection, this is probably the biggest limiting factor for those. You just really have to think about the placement a lot to get everything working well. I would say they do take some tinkering and fine tuning to get everything dialed in just right. I did definitely spend some time with mine to get everything working well. But once you do that, it works great. The automation capabilities are truly incredible with support for zones. You can do some really cool stuff. I was blown away three years ago when I first tried the FP2 by having different automations triggered depending on where I was in the room and moving throughout the room. And it still does feel like magic to this day with the new FP400. To me, the support for Zigbee and Thread here make it a very worthy upgrade. I've been able to set up multiple zones that I can easily expose over to Apple Home or Homey or Home Assistant or whatever you want to use for some really cool automations. The person counter worked pretty well, but I think that the AI enhanced person detection does still need a little bit of work before I'd feel good about relying on that for my automations. It did a pretty good job at not detecting my robot vacuum, but it did still have some issues like I said earlier with my dogs. So that's a bit unfortunate. I love the idea and hopefully it'll get better over time, especially because I know that a lot of people struggle with like presence automations and their pets. If you have small pets, it may do better for you than it did for me. But just aside from that, it's been a great presence sensor with the zone control in pretty much every way. You will not have to worry about your lights turning off simply because you're sitting still at your desk or your couch, which is what you would expect with a good presence sensor. The FP400 is available now for $79.99. I'll put an affiliate link down in the description below if you're interested. Using that link does help support me and this channel and is always much appreciated. If you watch this and you're thinking maybe you don't need all the bells and whistles in a sensor like this, maybe you just want something more basic without the zone controls and stuff like that, something easier to install, I would highly recommend checking out the FP300 sensor. I'll put a link to the full video I made right up here for that if you want to check it out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video.