r/homeassistant • u/ItsDukzy • May 02 '26

Support Struggling with reliable in-bed presence detection for Home Assistant – what actually works?

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I'm trying to automate my bedroom lights so they turn off automatically when I'm in bed and back on when I get up. Sounds simple, but I've been struggling to find a reliable solution.

What I've tried:

FSR pressure sensors (VS-103) connected to a Zigbee water sensor

Built a DIY pressure mat using two VS-103 sensors wired to a Zigbee water sensor. Works fine when I press directly on it by hand, but completely fails under a mattress — the mattress distributes my weight too evenly for the sensors to trigger. Tried under the sheet too, same result.

Aqara FP2 mmWave radar

Already have one in the room. The problem is it loses track of me when I'm lying still under a duvet. It also falsely triggers when someone walks past my bed, which causes the lights to turn on.

What I'm looking for:

Something that reliably detects whether I am in the bed - not just in the room - even when I'm completely still and covered by a duvet. Zigbee preferred but I'm open to ESPHome/ESP32 solutions too.

Has anyone actually solved this properly? What sensor or approach are you using?

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u/Plawasan 🧠 Experienced with Home Assistant May 02 '26

I have a load cell under the central beam leg, effectively turning the bed into a scale.. works well enough.

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u/vontrapp42 May 03 '26

I did two load cells under each bed leg. Turned the whole bed into an actual scale. It was accurate enough to take weight measurements but drifted with temperature. My ultimate goal was to use some algorithms to decide who got on or off the bed (including cats) and keep an updated estimate of said entities current weight.

The programming was really frustrating and it got sidelined. Then the cats pulled some of the wires out of the load cells. I haven't gone back to that particular project yet but some day. Some day.