Zigbee Battery Powered Presence Sensor ZG-204ZM Review

90 thoughts on “Zigbee Battery Powered Presence Sensor ZG-204ZM Review”

1. Interesting device, but IMHO missing one significant measure as I see. All non-battery powered presence sensors I tested, were able to provide distance till the object. Maybe not so accurate, but still. So they would work in scenarios when need to run scenario when presence/motion within 1m from the radar. So batteries adding some shortcomings and from my perspective it’s kind of more precise motion sensor, than presence sensor. However, battery power is a huge benefit. Anyway, thank you for the review.

2. Great review!

   What about the sensor’s field of vision? did you test it out?

   • Yes, it’s detects static presence about 60° horizontally

     • so 120° in total? what is the max range for the mmwave sensor at these angles? usually its much less.

3. Sooooo… Tempting! Makes me thinking going to Z2M from ZHA!

   • I’m developing a ZHA quirk, you can ghold out a few days. It will work with ZHA as well

     • Thank you soooo much! Can’t wait for the update.

     • Hey just wondering if you’ve had any luck getting this working with ZHA? I’m not sure how quirks work.

       • I’ve just ordered and it’s expected to arrive by month end. Hopefully it’ll work by then.

     • looking forward to it.
       I tried to migrate my whole ZHA to Z2M but I ran into so many problems I rolled back.
       When/where/how it will be available in ZHA?

4. This is great news, finally I can replace the many Aqara motion sensors that I have in locations without power, meaning the lights won’t go out when I’m sitting still.

5. Thanks for another great review.

   I’m pretty disappointed with limited ZHA integration, although it might be more of the HA issue than the sensor itself.
   It seems odd to me that with big ZHA push there are still so many instances of limited support for plenty sensors.

   • I’m working on the custom quirk, it will work in ZHA. Stay tuned

     • Thanks and appreciate your efforts.

6. I placed my order after your review. I hope it works for my restroom when I am on my throne :))) Also, I hope more such devices come up soon with better smaller designs. However, by far my favorite MMwave is the one with build in relay. I got 6 for all my rooms and hallways. I wish there was a way to stop my cat from triggering it 🙁

   • The best use case

7. Whooo nice finding!! Just what i was hoping for: https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/sonoff-presence-sensor-teardown-and-review-snzb-06p/#comment-10572
   Like always, thanks for your great review!

8. Will it work with the ConBee II (deConz) ?

   • Yes, I see no reason why it shouldn’t.

9. Is there an existing driver for it (GitHub?) that someone has written to work with Hubitat?

10. Good review, thanks!

    Did you ever experianced any problem in zigbee2mqtt were chaning fadeout-time didnt make any difference? My never reaches “static” mode but goes straight from large -> none.

    Bought another one with your links, hopefully that will work better!

    • That’s weird, it should stay in static as long as its detecting presence. Which coordinator do you have?

11. Any advice on making this device usable? The mmWave radar in mine seems to be rubbish compared with my other Moes ones, I can set distance to 5m and sensitivity to max and be sitting 2m from it literally waving at it and the state will still change from Static to None – it’s almost like the settings aren’t propagating over properly (although the device still resets and flashes the led when I do change a setting)

    • Can you tell me which coordinator you are using? Device works well with CC2562 (UZG-01). Seems like a weird issue.

      • I’m using a ConBee II stick, plenty of other repeaters and a stable network. Weirdly I found having taken the batteries out and put them back in again it seemed to work as expected for a while, but then the same issues recurred. It’s as if the mmWave sensor itself is crashing after a while. I will continue to test!

        Big fan of your site by the way, always enjoy your reviews which are always incredibly detailed and informative!

        • Thank you for the feedback.
          Out of curiosity, have you updated the firmware of the Conbee II?
          I’m not sure about this one, but newer devices have trouble with the Conbee II and its old chip.
          Perhaps its time for a new coordinator (UZG-01) and turn the Conbee II into a Thread border router. 🙂

      • On further investigation – it seems like there is a bug in either the Z2M quirk or in the firmware itself. I am finding repeatedly that after removing and replacing the batteries the device performs as expected, responsive to very fine movements and not getting any false negatives. However as soon as I change one of the parameters – doesn’t seem to matter if it’s the distance, fade time, or sensitivity – the mmwave sensor seems not to detect anything and will automatically mark as ‘away’ after the fade time (even on max sensitivity/distance with me flapping a hand about). Strange.

12. I have followed your link to AliExpress and around £12 gets you a Pir only version and £26 gets a PIR plus mmwave version which is around $15 and $30.

    • Unfortunately, pricing on AliExpress is location dependent :/

    • I’m UK ingot it on amazon for £10 there’s many listing 4anging from £10-15

      • Yes, you are right. Like this one?

13. Fantastic review (and amazing site, it is quite fantastic for those who are building a smart home).

    I know it is a cheap sensor, but since it has radar capability, is it possible to configure 2 different zones?

    • No, the LD2410S does not support detection zones.

14. Hi,
    any progress for custom quirk?
    Will you update this post?

15. I have bought a couple of these but am very disappointed to find that I’m unable to see any of the Z2M configuration options in my ZHA installation. Would your quirk (whatever a quirk is!) fix that?

16. Can confirm that these devices are pretty damn good, been comparing the performance versus my PIR sensor + dfrobot sen0395 mmwave sensors (running on EverythingPresenceOne ESPhome firmware) that I’ve been using for a long time and all things considered they detect presence nearly as accurately (without having to run a usb cable up the wall to power the thing!). Am in the process of transitioning all my rooms to these sensors!

17. I just received and installed it in my restroom. I was getting false negatives as it was over my head about 50 cm and it was going away when I was there. I changed the possition to be at about my chest level and so far so good is has been working nicely.

    P.S. One new addition probably in the newest MQTT is that the fade time is down to 10 seconds instead of 30 which is much better. I wish I was able to go down to 1 second, but even 10 is fine. After I leave the restroom it turns the lights off and the fan withing 10-15 sec generally 🙂 Happy to use it in a place where no cable is possible!

18. Just got one of these and mighty confused about configuring it… like now mine has stuck as me being “home” for hours in a room I am not. Is there some sort “reset” as to it understand the room is empty (and then report on changes) or does it not work like that? Like I have an FPS2 and that one I can understand better at least and I can run that thing which sort of analyzed the room freshly.

    • Have you been able to fix it? I’m also facing the same situation as you, I’m frustrated because I can’t fix it

    • Try to disassemble the sensor and wipe off the flux in the place where the presence sensor is soldered to the chip. It helped me, after this exercise it works without failures.
      https://imgur.com/a/5pZtOlQ

      • Tried your way but didn’t change anything

      • Hi, I have bought this sensor since day 1 it launched in China. I have the same exact issue whereby it will never reach None state. As I try pry open using a test pen, I immediately clean the area as mention and also the 2 golden pad. I bring back to my own house to try and it work like a charm. Now I may need to monitor any false detection for a day as I am not at my home till tmlr. Thanks guy!

        • I had tried to clean the 5 contacts as mention in the other channel. It works when the device is dismantle with no cover. Once I install back the cover, it will not work properly anymore. It will always stuck at Presence state.

19. I just found this new version – https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DmandIj
    Do you think you can review it? 🙂 thanks

    • Yes, I have it Alex.
      I will dedicate some time to it and test it out.

      • Just got one of these and mighty confused about configuring it… like now mine has stuck as me being “home” for hours in a room I am not. Is there some sort “reset” as to it understand the room is empty (and then report on changes) or does it not work like that?

20. I have similar issues with some of those sensors. I bought 4 and 2 of them seem to never reset the motion state from “large” to “none”.

21. I bought 4 of these based on the strength of this review. Unfortunately I have the same problem others have posted here where after some amount of time, usually less than a day, they get “stuck” reporting presence. After pulling the batteries and restarting, they’ll work for a few hours, maybe half a day, then I’ll see that the motion state never changes from ‘large’ and the presence state never turns off.

    Another oddity is that they won’t report presence state until I set the distance and sensitivity. Until then, they report presence state of Null.

    • That’s very odd behavior. My sample has been working flawlessly, no hiccups whatsoever.
      See this image for the past week:
      

      Its mirroring the states across both entities correctly and has never gotten stuck.

      • Now that I’ve had a couple days to run all 4, I see that I’m 50/50 on working sensors.

        https://imgur.com/0MNIBAa

        • Same here. I bought a 2 pack.

          One sensor works okay ( it’s in my garage, though presence only seems to work when set less than 4m, regardless of sensitivity value – so maybe it’s still not totally working correctly…)

          The other sensor doesn’t work at all. When distance is configured lower than 2m, presence goes straight from large to none. Configured greater than 2m, presence never leaves static.

          Quality control seems pretty poor.

    • Hi! I ran into the same problem that many people write about: the sensor freezes in a state of constant “presence”. I managed to solve it. I disassembled the sensor and wiped the flux from the chip in the place where the contacts of the presence sensor are soldered.

      • I also found the motion sensor has bad soldering (it fell out). Resoldering and cleaning did the job (so far). Logic tells me that when motion ‘freezes’, presence detection will no longer work.

        • How id you resolder the PIR? I was afraid to pull the plastic shroud that holds the fresnel lens so I don’t know if the PIR is an SMD or not

    • https://imgur.com/a/5pZtOlQ

22. I am very excited I found another battery powered mmwave sensor, and the interesting part is from Xiaomi! This will be their 3rd mmwave sensor and their 1st battery powerd! Do you think you can get a sample of it and test it for us: Here is the video – https://youtu.be/gWClx7QCep4

23. What bothers me is this line: “Notably, the sensor is advertised as being able to accurately detect people even when they are not moving, as long as there is constant lighting.”

    Here is the whole article: https://www.gizmochina.com/2024/05/13/xiaomi-people-presence-sensor-specs-price/

24. any progress with ZHA support?

25. Another brand new mmwave sensor. I would love to see it reviewed by you!
    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006412041826.html

    🙂 Thanks

    • Location Germany:

      “Unfortunately, this item is currently not available at your location.”

      Please provide details of the device you found.

26. I’ve managed to find a quirk for this I’ve set up a dir for it and linked it in my configuration.yaml and put true for quirks, reset HA, removed and reconnected and it can’t get it to work it doesn’t show that its using the quirk.

    https://gist.github.com/vinzent/2cd645b848fd3b6a0c3e5762956ec89f#file-zg-204zm-py

    • This quirk merely converts the Motion cluster to an Occupancy cluster with the same binary states.

      • Thats true. It’s my first quirk. At least it seems I can set the fading time , detection senisitivy and static detection distance by the “Manage zigbee device” functionality of ZHA. Just don’t know if it really works. 😉

27. Great article! However, I’m encountering some difficulties and I’m not quite sure why this is problematic.

    I’ve purchased three units of the Model: ZG-204ZS/ZG-204ZM. But the pairing doesn’t seem to work as it should.

    They are detected quickly, but are displayed as Model: ZG-204ZL, which means there’s no presence sensor included…

    Do you have any idea what I might be doing wrong?

    I have the Sonoff 3.0 Model P configured with my Zigbee2MQTT.
    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

    • You bought the PIR-only version by mistake.

      • Doh!
        I think you are right….

        Thank you

28. Hi,
    Where can i download the quirk for this device?
    Thank you for the review and the quirk!

29. I just received three units from AliExpress.
    They are described as:
    Tuya Zigbee Human Presence Detector Smart Human Body PIR Sensor Motion Microwave Radar Detector Works With Alexa Google Home

    ZHA will recognize it as MS01 by zbeacon.

    Funtionality is that of a PIR only. Has anyone seen this?

    I suppose I could pry the little device open to find a mmWave radio.

30. Hi

    I made a hack of a quirk that at least exposes the configuration parameters as numbers. I made it part of the ts0601.py, I have not submitted it to HA because it’s a hackjob and I’m not sure if the code is good enough. But it works for me and is enough for me so if you can use it, here’s the link:
    https://github.com/mikosoft83/ha_stuff/blob/master/ts0601_motion.py

    • I tried adding it but I’m struggling to get it to use the quirk how do i do this?

31. My experience with this unit is that it generally works well (Z2M on Sonoff P dongle) with one big problem. Minor issue is the 30s fade time but I can live with it (setting it shorter makes it 60s?). The biggest issue I have is the way it lies about the battery life/level. I have mine in the downstairs toilet, on a typical day like yesterday it got triggered 17 times. The last set of batteries lasted 2-3 weeks! And worse, it lies – it stays at 100% battery all the time until the last day when it drops to 10% for 12 hours, then 5% for 12 hours then dies. This is the second set of batteries and same behaviour both time. I can’t recommend this for any use case with regular traffic – might be OK in a room you don’t go into every day.

32. I saw this article and decided to buy it. It arrived today and I’ve put it in my office next to my Aqara FP1 to compare the performance before I put it in the bathroom.

    I must say this is working excellent for me so far. Unlike others have reported here, it changes from motion to ‘static’ or ‘static’ to ‘none’ just fine with Z2M.

    This is a game changer for where I don’t want to drag a power cable like bathroom or hallway. I’ll be getting a few more of these for sure.

    Also bought you a Coffee because I love this blog, your tests are incredibly helpful and it’s my No 1. source to keep updated with what’s new out there.

    Please keep up the good work 🙏

    • Hey, thank you so much for the support!

    • Make sure you test the battery life down to replacement first. It may not take as long as you think because the 100% battery level is probably a lie. See my comment above.

33. Hi !

    How reliable do you think the light measurement part is? Do you think show the real value?

    I have a Xiaomi light detector, it follows the lux value well when it shows 500lux on this 2800lux . On Xiaomi 1200lux this device show the max 2999 lux.

    I noticed that, it gets a little light, it moves between a very narrow range near the maximum value.
    If I set calibration, it still measures within narrow limits.

    • I would not rely on the illuminance reading of this sensor.

34. Well this is my experience with this device – It sets presence to Home when powered on and stays in that state until you remove the battery and put it back, where is stays as Away until it detects presence or movement.

    The Motion state entity switches between static and large depending on human presence. It never goes to None for me so I can’t even kludge up some usage for it with the erraneous presence value.

    Opening up to clean the flux doesn’t seem to help. It’s dry and wiping it doesn’t make a difference.

    Luckily it’s cheap, but this is sadly not recommended from me.

35. I bought two of these to try out from your 2nd AliExpress affiliate link (“haozee Official Store”). They took exactly two weeks to arrive to me in USA.

    I’ve been testing them for several hours so far today. After some fiddling with sensitivity and range, I’m happy to report that they are accurate with no false negatives thus far!

    Zigbee2MQTT reports Zigbee Model=TS0601, Zigbee Manufacturer=_TZE200_kb5noeto (one character off from the one you mentioned “Gets stuck at presence detected and has other issues”), Manufacturer=Tuya, Model=ZG-204ZM. No issues getting stuck on Presence Detected etc.

    If all goes well with more testing, I’ll probably roll the dice and order some more from the same seller.

    • Could you come back after 3/4 weeks and update on battery level?

      • I’ll try to remember! So far they’re all still at 100% after 5 days. Like others here, I suspect it just always reports 100% until it dies.

36. The very first one I bought elsewhere confirm having the famous forever presence issues.
    I bought another one from my country Lazada seller which actually delivered from China.
    It works perfectly.
    I immediately order another 3 more which arrive yesterday. All 3 are working properly too.
    The only different is the SmartLife device UI is very different from the first problematic one. I guess there is a hardware change in the latter batch.

37. The newer batch seem able to set Presence Keep Time as 10sec as all my 3 new set is able to do so.

38. Yeah, I got _TZE200_kb5noeto and it does not operate reliably. I can confirm… I put it in the bathroom and I sometimes get false triggers when nobody is in there.
    PS. The device has a firmware v. 0122052017 and now has some more entities (additionally you can set Motion detection mode [only_pir, pir_and_radar, only_radar] and Motion detection sensitivity [0-10]).
    I will try to get another one from your link 🙂 and see if I get the better one.

    • PS. I got mine from “haozee Official Store”.

      • Some problem here. I too got mine from “haozee Official Store”.

39. Hey guys, how you check which variant is the device?
    _TZE200_2aaelwxk
    _TZE200_5b5noeto

    • _TZE200_2aaelwxk

      • I mean I am using smart Life app and I do not know how to check which variant is my current device. Is there a way to see wat is your hardware variant?

        • I didn’t bother with their app, but the device page in Zigbee2MQTT (first screenshot in this review under the “Zigbee2MQTT” section) shows all of that info. Not sure about ZHA.

40. I got mine from Lazada Haozee too. So far all working.

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