Andrej, you've done it again! This is an amazing review of the Apollo MSR-1! No need for an apology; it was worth the wait! Please let us know if there are any questions. Cheers, Justin Apollo Automation

@holgerschurig4430

3 ай бұрын

Was this a paid review?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Excellent question! But sadly, no. Of course, don't let that stop you from doing super thanks 😂

@ngripon

3 ай бұрын

Hey How much duty you have to pay to import in Europe?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

@@ngriponunfortunately, there is duty. And it's calculated on overall cast, including shipping cost. This also depends on your local importer- for example for Fedex, we have local company that charges about 20€ just to do papers, while DHL does that "free". So depends on carrier, and company that does import. Plus VAT in your country (25% here).

@ngripon

3 ай бұрын

@@BeardedTinker wow so with bad luck, this device can cost about 100 € !

timely video for me as I'm strongly considering using these as I've been on the Everything Presence One waiting list for a couple of months now. Thanks

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Glad it was helpful!

Another great video, thank you! Where the MSR-1 will win over others is the openness of the company regarding the documentation, examples and 3D printer files. As a fairly new Home Assistant fan, the learning curve for it all - including the devices - can be quite steep, so the documentation etc is essential and very welcome. Good price point too, except delivery costs to the UK are prohibitive, along with the import duty and fees that will result. It'd be great if Apollo could retail this through Amazon, perhaps? Even if it is the Amazon US site this often enables wrapping the fees up in the price for UK delivery. I hope you enjoyed London and it wasn't too wet for you...

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Still drying my boots from London, but it was soo much fun. Loved every minute of it. Yeah, that's unfortunately a issue. Especially if the devices are cheaper as shipping + customs + tax add a lot on top of it. Having it available through Amazon would be great, but I think it also creates a lot of issues for sellers due to all of the red-tape and support costs that Amazon adds on top of it.

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

Thanks for the kind words! International shipping and customs fees have been an issue for us and we've tried to help by offering the cheapest shipping we can as well as get European distributors. We have two European distributors, Open-Circuit and Domo-Supply, at the moment so we hope this helps some international customers. We have looked into Amazon and started the process of setting up a store but we don't have plans to start selling on there yet. Cheers, Justin Apollo Automation

@Bodrick01

3 ай бұрын

@@Bunton33 Hi Justin - thank for taking the time to reply! Just to perhaps be a little obvious, please note that as the UK is no longer part of the European Union as far as shipping and tax is concerned, unless your distributors are actually UK based this won't actually help those of us here. Amazon can solve the shipping and import issues, but I appreciate that comes at a cost to you guys and so ultimately the end customer. I'm still looking forward to getting my hands on one of these at some point though. 🙂 Thanks again. Greg.

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

@@Bodrick01 I completely forgot about BREXIT! Thank you for reminding me. We will revisit the Amazon store and make it a priority so we can help users like you. Thanks again for the support! Please let us know if you have any other questions! Cheers, Justin Apollo Automation

Oh I wish you’d posted this a week ago. I’ve been waiting months for the everything presence lite to come back on sale, missed out on the last batch that went in hours and no sign of it reappearing. I looked at the Apollo but TBH wasn’t seeing the value it could offer in a basic non-CO2 option, and it looked expensive and weird shape with the plug-in … didn’t appreciate that that was optional. So I ended up buying some custom components from aliexpress to reluctantly make my own in esphome. But now I see what the Apollo can do I’m having to reconsider again. Grr. Thanks

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Building your own DIY sensor adds a lot of fun (and frustration) to a project. If you can enjoy the time building it, that's better than buying it off the shelf.

Thank you very much for showing.

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

My pleasure - thank you!!!

Thanks for the video - ordered

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Have fun with it when it arrives!!!

These sensors are amazing, I'm looking forward to change all my zigbee presence sensors for those! Cheers from beard to beard! (ok that doesn't sound too adequate but you get my point lol)

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

😂 It's been such a long day, I needed a beard cheer! Thank you!

Thanks!

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

No, thank you, very, very much!!!

Very cool sensor, I have one in the mail

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

It's really great. And sooo tiny...

@emilsecker7881

3 ай бұрын

@@BeardedTinkerwhat kills it for me is that it’s wifi. I have enough crap on my wifi, if it was zigbee it would be great. An awesome review though

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Connectivity... That's always the issue. I do have 3 AP at the moment, so no bottleneck there for now, but Zigbee would really be better.

@emilsecker7881

3 ай бұрын

@@BeardedTinker very nice. Sounds like you’re sorted

This looks like a fantastic little device, every feature I would imagine needing, and as you said the price seems really good! I can imagine putting several into an open plan room to get good coverage so the option to buy without CO2 sensor for some makes it even better value for money. How did they manage to get so much into such a small space? :) And with some GPIO pins, there is potential for upgrades - I can imagine maybe a speaker and microphone for HA voice assistance for example

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, it's really packed. As for pins, they are 3/5V, ground and I2C and that's enough - but the question is if you would use speakers & mic, how would it preform and would there be enough RAM - possibility is there.

@chrisdixon5241

3 ай бұрын

@@BeardedTinkerGood points! If it is just for voice control rather than playing music, there is probably less demand since it would be short bursts of sound, rather than some sustained load on the device. From your video it looked like a ESP32 inside so I think there could be enough performance... only 1 way to be sure though :)

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

@@chrisdixon5241 - yes, that's ESP32-C3-Mini. I think it has a bit less SRAM/ROM than normal ESP32, but it does have 4MB RAM. Only one way to find out ;)

@JoshFisher567

3 ай бұрын

Also microwakeword, which was announced about a week ago, only works on an S3 with at maybe 4MB, preferably 8MB of PSRAM. Openeakeword can't listen for the wake word on an ESP32,. What happens is the HA server does the listening. This obviously takes up resources and one of the devs said 4 or 5 ESP32 devices used for voice will bring down a raspberry pi 4. Openeakeword was never meant to be a long term solution for this reason. An atom echo won't take up any HA resources if you use the button and toggle voice off in the echo device settings in HA. The Wyoming satellite has enough resources to run Openeakeword with it listening for the wake word, I believe it's the only device that does besides Assist Microphone which is an add on that works with any USB microphone plugged into the HA server.. A ESPHome contributor was listening to a podcast where the main voice de, who actually works for Nabu,v was talking about how they couldn't figure out a way to do it and the Wyoming satellite was their temporary workaround. This was last November. The contributor, who isn't paid, took this as a challenge and wrote microwakeword., or at least got it somewhat working and then the voice and ESPHome devs from Nabu were more than happy to help fix any issues so about 4 months to develop. It really shows the power of open source software. I'm prettyy sure that guy just landed himself a job with Nabu Casa though. There is a site where you can flash any S3 box made by expressif, similar to the atom echo. People on the HA forums have got it working on the S3 wroom and S3 dev board. Both have 8MB of PSRAM. So do the 3 S3 box variants. The devs confirmed that 2MB isn't enough. 4MB might work but easier to just get an 8MB model. The price difference is maybe a dollar if you are doing DIY. Now you can have as many satellites as you want without it hogging resources from the HA server. Since it's done in ESPHome you can also have the wake word toggle a light or run a script. The only downside is it takes 2 days to generate a custom wake word, maybe 1 to 1 1/2 days with a decent GPU. The training process is way more involved than Openeakeword which takes roughly one hour to create a custom wake word.

@chrisdixon5241

3 ай бұрын

@@JoshFisher567Thanks for the detailed feedback, this is very interesting and really good to know!

You back from London? Hope you had a nice time?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Yes, got back on Saturday - had awesome time!

I'm all about Home Assistant for my personal use. So this is perfect.. But is it able to connect to alexa and google home? Asking for customers how isn't running HA.

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Not directly unfortunately. It's using ESPHome and as such would need something between Alexa/Google Assistant (such as HA) to push that data there.

In you opinion is it possible to add a pir sensor via the exposed gpio?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

If you get one with i2c data connection, it should work - exposed pins are: 3v, 5v, ground, and I2C. I did quick search and found few but they are expensive.

@francescoatria1086

3 ай бұрын

Gpio 5 is not an option?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

@@francescoatria1086 I think it's taken, need to check it out.

@francescoatria1086

3 ай бұрын

@@BeardedTinker documentation says it is available alongside 5v, 3v and i2c

@francescoatria1086

3 ай бұрын

@@BeardedTinker i have joined the apollo discord to ask them directly They said you can add pir sensor with the available gpio and can even still add the CO2 sensor since it uses I2C

With this device having only mmWave and no PIR like the EP1, how quick is it to detect motion/presence? That seems to be a common complaint with mmWave.

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

Our users have reported instant detection with the LD2410B in the MSR-1, and this is what we found in our testing. We initially started with both a PIR and mmWave, but we found the PIR was unnecessary. This allowed us to shrink the device to the smallest size possible. We have some photos of our prototypes on our Discord. Let us know if you have any more questions! Cheers, Justin Apollo Automation

@blm7929

3 ай бұрын

It was a problem with older devices like the Aqara one. But now it's really fast. I have a chinese mmWave Zigbee sensor and the Everything Presence One, the mmWave sensor triggers in less than a second.

@blm7929

3 ай бұрын

@@Bunton33 "but we found the PIR was unnecessary" it can be very useful, not for the speed but for the "confirmation". For example, I have tested a lot of mmWave sensors on my bathroom, they triggers really fast but their is a lot of false triggers because there is another room behind the wall where the sensor is and when someone walk behind, ALL the mmWave sensors detect it. So I use an Everything Presence One and trigger only with PIR and keep the track with mmWave sensor but the mmWave sensor does not trigger the light itself.

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

@@blm7929 PIR definitely has it's place in some setups but fortunately the LD2410B mmWave sensor we use has engineering mode. This allows you to fine-tune the distance gates and move/still energy thresholds to eliminate false positives. So you can turn off detection at a certain distances and stop the sensor from being triggered by people walking by. We have a couple videos explaining this on our KZread as well as tutorial pages on our Wiki. Let us know if you have any questions! Best, Justin Apollo Automation

Looking to use this as a vehicle presence sensor with an iBeacon device inside the car. Could this sensor detect the vehicle presence with the iBeacon and trigger an announcement via Alexa?

@BeardedTinker

25 күн бұрын

You could use it for that. But I think any ESP32 board with ESPHome and BT functionality would do the same.

@fedupgamer9075

24 күн бұрын

@@BeardedTinker Cool, I thought the same, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for the info, I'll check out the ESP32 also.

It's work good with fans?

@BeardedTinker

2 ай бұрын

Haven't tested with fan, but it should be same as most other mmWave presence sensors.

The device is interesting, but the price in Switzerland is excessive - 49 CHF ($56USD) is a bit too much for the basic model with no stand or CO2 sensor. :( Plus shipping, of course.

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Yeah, all those costs add up a lot.

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

We have a Switzerland distributor called Domo-Supply and they currently have stock! Let us know if you need anything else! Best, Justin Apollo Automation

@rklauco

3 ай бұрын

@@Bunton33I know, that's where I've checked it and the device is quite overpriced there :(

@Haldi4803

3 ай бұрын

@@rklauco shipping from the official Homepage is 12.21 ....+7% mwst and import cost from toll It's not much cheaper to buy on their homepage :(

Shop web site is blocked for me, registered as malicious. 😞

@ApolloAutomation

3 ай бұрын

Sorry to hear! This is a known issue with Shopify because they use the same IP address. We see this a lot on Eero routers. Are you able to access the shop on a mobile network? Best, Justin Apollo Automation

@manuelrodil1641

3 ай бұрын

@@ApolloAutomation Mobile network works. Thx

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

@@manuelrodil1641Happy to hear! Let us know if you need anything else! Cheers, Justin Apollo Automation

@brettautrey4117

3 ай бұрын

@@manuelrodil1641 I tried Mobile network with Wi-Fi turned off and got the same warning. I used Verizon. You're saying when you used a mobile carrier the problem went away?

they should use ld2420 instead of 2410. this will reduce the power consumption (- 100mWh).

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

As it's powered via USB cable, that isn't important as much as it would be if it would work via battery, but a good suggestion.

Why don't you add it to esphome?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

I've added it, or adopted via ESPHome page. There is not that much oce there as it's pulling most of the code from github. Actually, this is all there is: substitutions: name: apollo-msr-1-a5b148 friendly_name: Apollo Multisensor Mk1 (MSR-1) a5b148 packages: ApolloAutomation.MSR-1: github://ApolloAutomation/MSR-1/Integrations/ESPHome/MSR-1.yaml esphome: name: ${name} name_add_mac_suffix: false friendly_name: ${friendly_name} api: encryption: key: bunch_of_random_symbols_for_key wifi: ssid: !secret wifi_ssid password: !secret wifi_password

Their website triggers a warning about it being a malicious site and blocked my access unless i choose to bypass which is risky.

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

Sorry to hear! We reached out to Shopify support again. This is a known issue with Shopify because they use the same IP address. Are you able to access the shop on a mobile network? Best, Justin Apollo Automation

@mauricevandesande2500

3 ай бұрын

Same warming here (on mobile) from Norton360...

@kennethshock

2 ай бұрын

@@Bunton33 It worked for me. IPhone/iOS 17.4 using Safari browser. March 6, 2024 @ 8 PM MST.

This or the EP1?

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Depends. If you only want presence sensor, EP1 is better option due to better mmWave sensor and combo with PIR sensor. If you want other data too, MSR-1 is better with all other sensors on board that EP1 doesn't have. Plus you can save a bit of money with it as CO2 sensor is optional (you still get temperature, humidity, pressure and lux/UV).

Centimeters or millimeters? :D

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Ooopppssss :) Well, let's ignore that :)

I need to see the cpu speed component

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

Are you asking about the ESP32-C3-Mini? It is a single core CPU with 160MHz running frequency. Let us know if you need anything else. Cheers, Justin Apollo Automation

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

Also, if you are interested in CPU speed code, check the Github for MSR-1...

@yousaf.saleem

3 ай бұрын

@@Bunton33 I was looking for the CPCU speed code, I did went through the github, but it was little confusing. can you point out the relevant code?

@Bunton33

3 ай бұрын

@@yousaf.saleemI am not understanding what you are looking for. Could you explain it to me?

@yousaf.saleem

3 ай бұрын

@@Bunton33 at 5:15 there is a sensor name "ESP CPU speed" I need the code for that.

someone has a 3D printer.....

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

And it's a great way to use 3D Printer... Also, if you have one, you can get STLs and print case in any colout you want...

first

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

I'll be last ;)

Man you should review and test the functionality of the deviced. If all you showed is great, but then it fails to do basic things, it gets hot, unresponsive or false positives, there is little value in this review. Thanks for your videos though

@BeardedTinker

3 ай бұрын

For temperature, besides having a thin barrier in box separating sensor and air from rest of the enclosure + large vent openings that I've shown, you can always use calibration to calibrate it further and offset temperature. For Presence detection, it's as good as any other board with same mmWave sensor + depends on your configuration of gates/zones and thresholds. It needs tweaking values according to place you install it as with any DIY mmWave presence sensor. Or you can try RoomSenseIQ that has auto-learning feature - I haven't seen that in any other "DIY" sensors currently on market.

Too bad it's not AAA powered.

@BeardedTinker

Ай бұрын

It would probably eat through it in few hours. mmWave sensors need o be always on + of course CO2 sensor.