When I first saw the FP2 sensor, which uses millimeter wave technology to actually detect
presence in rooms, I knew it had the potential to fix so many of the issues with modern motion
detectors for the smart home. So I reached out to Aqara, who not only offered to send me the
new FP2 sensor before the embargo lifts here in the US for this device, but also offered
to sponsor this video as well with this sensor and a couple of their other smart home products.
The FP2 sensor is Aqara's latest sensor, and even though I'm not reviewing anything in this video,
we'll do a six-month later review of it. But what I can tell you now is it is the
most fascinating piece of technology that I've put in my smart home in
several years. This really does change the game for a lot of smart home automations.
It's much smaller in person than I was expecting and can be screwed into a wall or mounted to
the ceiling for the cleanest look, or you can adjust the puck sensor magnet
back to prop it up on a stand. And if you use the Aqara app to create an account,
you get access to many more features, some of which with the FP2 sensor are
pretty important. You can control the area of a given room to have the sensor focus on,
and create multiple areas to focus on, and tell the sensor to ignore other areas of a room.
Once you have the sensor placed where you want it, you can use the automatic setup feature in
the main Aqara app to identify interference. This way, the sensor is better able to identify living
people from stationary parts of a room that are causing any interference. After setting it up,
which you can do with either the Aqara app in HomeKit mode, which gives you basic functionality,
but if you want more advanced features, or to use the sensor with the Google Home or Amazon
platform, you'll need to create an Aqara account and log into the app, I was able to
place this sensor in my bedroom and place it on my bookshelf, so it had good visibility into my room.
When I walk out of my room, now, after about 10 seconds, my lights will turn off. Then
when I walk back in, they turn on in about a second, and it's pretty great. And so far,
this sensor has worked so well, I'm likely going to be buying many more of them to test in my home.
This type of sensor makes it possible so you could potentially just walk around your home
and have the lights follow you, never having to turn on a light switch, which has never really
been possible before. Because the one downside with the previous generation of motion sensors
is if you just sat down reading a book, the lights would turn off on you because the motion sensors
typically would just look for motion. They don't detect respiratory rates and just presence like
this presence sensor does, and that's what makes this thing so interesting. And since putting the
sensor in my room, I haven't had to touch my light switch. The lighting in my room is now
completely automatic, and that's just the start of what you could do with a sensor like this.
It's so sensitive and it can detect up to three people in a room at once. You could potentially
do more complicated automations with it, like have the TV automatically turn on when two people sit
down on the couch in the living room. And what's really nice about the FP2 sensor,
compared to the battery-powered sensors that Aqara makes, is it's directly powered in. So you don't
already need to have a Zigbee hub or go out and purchase one. All you need is this, it plugs
directly into power and you're good to go. Now, of course, having to have a power cord running
out of one of these things could potentially be a downside for some, depending on where you use it.
You can, of course, also install these in the ceiling, which I think is the
cleanest look and also gives the sensor the best view of the room. But of course,
you can also just take this little stand here, flip it out, and make it go on a stand as well.
That's what I've been doing until I figure out exactly where in a room I want to permanently put
one of these things. Aqara also put in an area on the back of this sensor where you can add adhesive
and just stick it on a wall in case you don't want to drill any holes into your wall as well.
Now the Zigbee hub Aqara makes that I mentioned before actually comes in several different form
factors. Some are just hubs, others have speakers and mics built into them. Others,
like the one the company sent me, have an integrated camera to monitor your
indoor environment. You'll need one of these hubs from Aqara for some of their
other cool sensors to work, like the door sensor and the water leak sensor.
I currently use their door sensor on my door, just as another additional backup
to alert me in case my August lock doesn't lock all the way or the door accidentally
comes open. That's happened a couple of times, which makes me feel a bit uneasy. Just having
a redundant system to make sure that my door is actually locked is really nice. I use the
leak sensor at the back of my toilet to detect a leak before I'd get significant water damage.
You can also place one near your washing machine, dishwasher, sink, or bathtub and get notified on
your phone or by the alarm sound from the Aqara hub. If a leak is detected,
you can also use it to trigger other devices, like shutting off the water valve or turning on a fan.
The G3 hub I have features a 2K resolution camera, 360-degree pan and tilt,
which allows me to see everything in my room, night vision, two-way audio,
so I can talk to someone or even a pet when I'm abroad, and it has facial recognition. You can
see if a family member or loved one made it back home safely. I like that Aqara added an
option to disable the camera when I'm home. The camera will actually rotate completely up into
its housing to block it from being able to see or record anything. That's a pretty smart feature.
I've also got their new G4 battery-operated doorbell as well. And as we record this, this is
the only battery-operated doorbell that supports Apple's HomeKit Secure Video feature. What Aqara
did with their design was actually pretty clever. They built all of the smarts for the doorbell into
its chime box, which is always plugged in. And that is what wirelessly connects to the doorbell
itself, which takes double A batteries. The G4 doorbell features 1080p full HD video, a
162-degree field of view, and a 16:9 aspect ratio. Its local AI can identify people, animals,
and even vehicles, allowing you to choose what types of alerts you want to be notified about.
It also features 24/7 recording to a microSD card or to the cloud so you don't miss anything. It has
two-way audio, night vision, and is weatherproof. The nice thing with all of these products is they
come from one company. So you don't have to go into several different apps to change the
settings for each one, which as you add more things into your smart home, you'll get what
I mean. That could kind of be annoying after a while. Which app does this thing belong to? So,
that's kind of nice that they have a suite of things that they sell as well.
And if you'd like to learn more about Aqara products, I've left a link below the description
where you can do just that. We'll have much more on the FP2 sensor in our full six-month later
review of it. And if you're interested in the smart home, make sure you check out some of the
other content I've done on the smart home, like how to start or expand your smart home in 2023.
I've also done an explainer on the brand-new Matter standard, how Thread is built into it,
and what you actually need to have in your smart home for the Matter standard to work.
Both of those videos you can get to them by clicking on the thumbnails here. And
make sure you consider giving this video a thumbs up if you liked it and found it
interesting. For Six Months Later, I'm Josh Teder. Thanks for watching.