FAQ

mmWave is incredibly sensitive in comparison to a regular PIR, and needs the settings tweaking to suit it’s environment. This will also help you get the most out of the EPL’s occupancy.

Placement

One of the first things to start with is to think about the placement in a room.

Ideally you’ll want the sensor wall mounted or on a sturdy object like a shelf or cabinet - because the mmWave is extremely good at picking up really fine movement, the object it’s mounted needs to be solid, otherwise this could introduce false detections (because there is genuine movement).

Don’t place the EPL on top of something that moves with vibrations such as an air-conditioning unit, as these small vibrations will be treated as detections.

You also don’t want to place it infront of or near things that move frequently too, as again, these will be picked up as detections.

I’ve seen a number of users confused thinking that the sensor is being triggered “falsely”. The vast majority of these are actually real detections - users just weren’t aware that something was moving, or how tiny a movement mmWave sensors can detect! I don’t blame you either, since the only real benchmark you have to go on is a regular PIR, which by comparison, take quite a lot of movement to trigger.

Common things that users don’t realise can be triggers are:

  • AC units
  • Plants moving in the wind
  • Curtains moving in the wind
  • Water droplets in a bathroom
  • Ceiling fans
  • Fans inside of a laptop/TV

There are ways to try and combat these movements, which we will discuss below - but if you can, try and avoid placement really close to things that move.

The mmWave sensor can also “see through” objects, which includes really thin walls - this means that movement could be detected through a wall (but generally this is only really thin walls.)

Distance

Once you have the placement set, next you should adjust the distance to the room.

Distance is really important to set correctly and should be set according to the distance of the room you have the EPL in. If you have the distance set too short, you might miss events that are outside of the range. If it’s set too long for the room, it might catch things that are outside of the room, or it can cause the signal to “bounce”.

Don’t set the distance too long for the room it is place in - this can cause undesirable results.

You don’t need to be very accurate with the distance, just a rough ball park within roughly 0.5m.