ESP32's are cheaper than Pi Zero's and more available. However, after attending a recent home automation meetup hosted by dotnetsheff, I learned that ESPresense is an alternative to Room Assistant, but is designed to work on an ESP32. Supply chain issues and an increase in demand mean that getting hold of Raspberry Pis is difficult at the moment. The only downside is that Room Assistant runs on a Pi Zero W, Pi 3 or Pi 4.

The system works by determining your presence in a room based on which Pi Zero your beacon is closest to. Room Assistant will require a Raspberry Pi Zero W to be present in every room that you'd like to track devices in, I originally stumbled across Room Assistant, which uses a Raspberry Pi Zero W to track the signature of bluetooth devices from room to room. However, most solutions gravitate around tracking people using BLE, as most people these days carry a smartphone or some other wearable device with them that acts as a BLE beacon. There are several different options for tracking room occupancy. Presence Detection and ESPresenseĪ motion sensor will only detect changes in passive infrared, but what if you could detect presence more reliably? What if you could detect specifically who was in a given room? Still enough that a motion sensor won't pick up that you're still in the room, and before you know it, you're sat in the dark. The issue with this approach is that you sit very still when you're sitting watching TV in the living room or focused on some work in the office. In the past, I've used automations in the living room and my home office to turn off lights if no motion is detected after some time. Motion sensors work well for identifying when someone goes into a room, but if you want to try and figure out when someone is no longer in a room, a motion sensor may not be the best approach. One of the first things I did when I started with Home Assistant was to get to grips with using motion sensors to trigger automations.

Home assistant on pi zero