Last year, Aqara launched the Aqara Presence Sensor FP2. Unlike regular motion (PIR) sensors, the FP2 works with a millimeter-wave radar to detect presence. It’s able to detect and follow multiple persons in the room, allowing users to automate their home based on their exact location. You can define up to 30 zones in the room, which are all exposed to Apple HomeKit. We’ve tested the Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 in our living room with open kitchen to automate the lights.
Features
The Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 is a presence sensor based on millimeter-wave radar, which is able to detect very small movements in the room. Even when you’re sleeping, it’s able to detect you’re still there. These are the main features of the FP2:
- Connected over WiFi with your Smart Home (Aqara app and Apple HomeKit), no hub required
- Flexible magnetic base
- 120 degree detection angle, up to 6 meters
- Up to 30 zones, all separately exposed to HomeKit
- Powered by USB-C cable
- Zone detection, fall detection or sleep detection mode
As the device is not battery powered, you will need an outlet near the device. As the device works over WiFi, no hub is required. You can set interference zones to avoid interference from fans or other moving objects.
Installation Aqara FP2
The installation of the Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 is important for reliable presence detection. Aqara advices to place the sensor at a height of 1.4-1.8m for the best results. Depending on your room, it might require some tweaking to get the right position for the FP2. To set up the device in the Aqara app, you need to press the button on the device for 10 seconds to put it in configuration mode. It will immediately ask you to add the device to Apple HomeKit by scanning the QR code on the device. It will expose a presence sensor and a light sensor which can both be used in the Apple Home app. Within the Aqara app, you need to go through some steps to set-up the device. You will see a map which you can alter to your situation by adding specific zones, the walls, exit and entries and interference zones. You can also add stickers to reflect furniture in the room. There is a maximum of 30 zones, but most likely you just need a few. In my case, I’ve set one zone for the living room, and one for the kitchen table. The Apple Home app with automatically be updated by showing two extra zones, next to the main presence sensor which covers the full room.
To know how to define the different zones, you can walk through the room as the Aqara app will show a dot on the map where you are. This way, you can define the walls, exits and the specific edges of the zones you want to define. More tricky are the interference zones, which we will address later. During use, you can easily adjust the zones as you find out how the FP2 registers your presence through the room.
Daily use
Probably one of the most popular automations based on the FP2 are Smart Lights. You can automate your lights by turning them on while presence is detected in a specific zone and turning them off when no presence is detected. However, you can of course also think of a lot more ways to automate your home based on the FP2, as you could also set an automation to turn on the tv, set the lights and the temperature as soon as you sit on your couch. I’ve mainly used the device to control my lights. As I have everything connected to the Apple Home app, I’ve just set 4 simple automations:
- If presence is detected in the living room zone, turn on the lights in the living room
- If no presence is detected in the living room zone, turn of the lights in the living room
- If presence is detected in the kitchen table zone, turn on the lights above the kitchen table
- if no presence is detected in the kitchen table zone, turn off the lights above the kitchen table
These automations are easy to set up and just take a few minutes. After these are active, the Aqara FP2 directly shows its power. As soon as I walk over to the living room area, my lights turned on. When I walk over to the kitchen, the light turn of behind me and the lights above the kitchen table turn on. The most convenient feature is the way the FP2 is able to continuously detect whether you’re still in that specific zone, even when you’re not moving. This makes sure the lights stay on as long as you’re there. The first time, it feels quite magical to see the lights follow you through the room, especially if you set a lot of different zones within the same room.
The Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 can however also suffer from seeing ‘ghosts’. When you check the floorpan in the Aqara app, you might occasionally see some extra people in the room. While it can track multiple people simultaneously, it will also sometimes see people while they’re not there. This will cause issues in your automations as it will either turn on the lights when you’re not in the room, or it will keep the lights on while you’re already gone. The placement of the FP2 can make a real difference, but also setting interference zones are very important. Some objects, such as fans, can cause the FP2 to think there’s someone in the room. When you select the area with the ghost, you can set this area as an interference zone, which means the FP2 will not take (false) presence/movement into account. This will take some tweaking, but with some patience you can achieve a very good result.
One of the strong features of the Aqara FP2 is the extensive support for Apple HomeKit. It’s very convenient to have a separate presence sensor showing up for every single zone. This makes it very ease to automate based on the presence detected by the FP2 in Apple HomeKit. With the Aqara Hub M3, it’s now also possible to add 3rd party matter devices to the Aqara Home app, so you could also automate everything in the Aqara app if you prefer that. The light sensor exposed to HomeKit is also a nice addition, as you can set your automations conditionally to the current light conditions, making sure lights are not turned on when there’s already enough daylight in the room.
Conclusion
The Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 is an impressive sensor with a lot of possibilities. You have a lot of control over the exact automations based on your location in the room. With the Apple HomeKit integration, it’s very ease to set up automations. It can occasionally detect ghosts, but using interference zones or trying different positions of the sensor can mostly solve that. When you compare this to a regular motion sensor, there’s a lot more possible with the FP2, and it’s nice to have that all in one single device. If you’re not interested in specifying different zones within the room, you can also look into the Aqara Presence Sensor FP1E, which works over Zigbee and has only one zone. However, if you like to precisely automate everything based on your exact position, the Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 might be an interesting choice.
The Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 is available for $82.99/82.99/82.99 on Amazon in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, France and The Netherlands.
