So you’ve probably seen smart home thermostats, locks, plugs and lights. But have you checked out smart home sensors?

From our perspective, manufacturers haven't tapped the full potential of smart home sensors. It will be interesting to see what they come up with in the next couple of years. We say this because our experience with the current crop of sensors and the Apple Home app haven't been great.

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I’ll be honest with you, smart home sensors are generally quite limited especially for Apple Home. There is a lot of progress that can be made in the sensor portion of smart home devices as my overall experience with the D-Link Omna, Elgato Eve Room, Elgato Eve Outdoor and iHome Home sensors haven’t been great. Apple also needs to step up their game as the Apple Home app isn’t designed to handle sensor data well.

BUT with that being said, the standout product that I’ve used sensor-wise is Eve Room sensor. It has been an eye opener for me when it comes to air quality in my home.

From my perspective, sensors fall into three categories. The first being motion based sensors, the second being open/close sensors and the last being environmental sensors.

Motion based sensors such as the Omna and Eve Motion will tell you if motion has been detected. These sensors have varying cones of sensitivity with the Dlink being smart enough to allow you to pick which quadrants in its FOV to detect motion in.

The Apple Home App allows you to trigger an automation with these motion sensors which is handy.

The second group, the open and close sensors are very binary. The Eve Door Sensor will tell you if it is open or closed. I personally do not know where I would use the open and close sensor. I’m about to be a father so making sure that certain doors and closets are closed might be useful? Like the motion based sensors, you can trigger automations with these types of sensors.

The last group of sensors are the environment sensors. This group of sensors has the biggest potential in my opinion but as I said earlier, Apple is going to need to improve the Home app so that we can do more with the data. The different types of sensors you can use include air quality sensors, humidity, air pressure and temperature.

Unlike the first two types of sensors, you can’t set an automation to trigger another device. For example, you can’t have an automation starting a heater when the temperature falls below a certain threshold. This might be useful for people who only need to heat a single room rather than the entire house. Hopefully Apple builds this level of automation into the next iteration of the Home App.

So what sensors have I found to be fairly useless? For me personally, the Eve Outdoor sensor seems like a waste of money. This sensor provides readings for Air Pressure, Humidity and Temperature. Now out of the three, the only thing I’m concerned about is temperature so having the Eve Outdoor sensor beside my 7 dollar outdoor thermometer is quite redundant.

Now if you need the extra info on the Air Pressure and Humidity, the Eve Outdoor sensor might be useful but there is going to be cheaper alternatives, if all you’re looking for localized weather readings. There are a couple of other things that bother me about the outdoor sensor since the temperature is probably going to quite accurate for my location but is it going to be that much more accurate than the weather stations near your home?

Another thing that bothers we about smart home sensors is the cost. Take the Eve Door sensor for example. Is it worth $40 dollars to know remotely if a door is open? I’m sure there will be circumstances where that will be useful but I’m having a hard time figuring that out.

Which sensor has been the most useful? The Eve Room sensor has been enlightening in terms of air quality. I’ve been the using the room sensor for several months in my office and the first few days were eye opening. Apparently my home office had extremely bad air quality! I tried opening the window which improved the air quality slightly but the biggest culprit in the office was the printer. The moment I turned it off, the air quality in my office was great!

Now did I physically notice the difference in the improved air quality. No so this is basically a placebo effect? I’ll never know.

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