Best mmWave Presence Sensors for Home Assistant

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Best mmWave Presence Sensors for Home Assistant

If your lights still switch off while you’re sitting on the sofa, you need a presence sensor, not a motion sensor. The Aqara FP2 is the best option for most Home Assistant users who want zone-aware, multi-person detection without soldering anything. If you want 100% local control with zero cloud compromise, the Everything Presence One on ESPHome is the gold standard — but it costs more and demands more setup effort. Read on for the full breakdown.

What makes mmWave different from PIR

A PIR sensor detects changes in infrared heat as a warm body moves across its field of view. The moment you stop moving — reading a book, watching TV, sleeping — a PIR sensor loses you and your automations break. A mmWave radar sensor works by emitting high-frequency electromagnetic waves and analysing what bounces back. It picks up micro-movements as subtle as the rise and fall of your chest while breathing, so a room stays “occupied” as long as someone is genuinely in it. That difference transforms lighting, climate, and energy automations from annoying to invisible.

One practical note before buying: mmWave radar can detect movement through drywall, wood, and thin interior walls. A sensor mounted close to a shared wall with another occupied room may report phantom presence. The fix is to reduce the sensor’s maximum detection distance or exclude the outer detection gates during tuning.

Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 — Best Overall

The FP2 is a 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi device that uses 60 GHz millimeter-wave radar. It covers areas up to roughly 40 m² and lets you carve that space into up to 30 individually named zones — sofa, desk, doorway — each of which becomes its own binary sensor entity in Home Assistant. It can simultaneously track up to five people and exposes fall detection as a separate event, which is genuinely useful in bedrooms used by elderly family members. There is also a built-in lux sensor for light-conditional automations.

Home Assistant users add it via the HomeKit Controller integration. A firmware update enabled local control after initial setup, so it no longer requires a live internet connection for day-to-day operation once it is paired. You still need the Aqara app and an Aqara account to draw your zones before you can unplug from the cloud entirely.

Strengths

• Up to 30 configurable zones, each a separate HA entity — the most of any plug-and-play sensor in this roundup
• Simultaneous detection of up to five people; presence bleeds out within seconds when someone leaves
• Local control available post-setup; no ongoing cloud dependency once configured

Drawbacks

• Zone calibration is genuinely fiddly — walking the room and drawing zones in the Aqara app takes patience, and sloppy zone boundaries cause bleed-through between areas
• Needs constant USB-C power and ships without an adapter; no Matter support; the Aqara app periodically phones home even in HomeKit-only setups

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Aqara Presence Sensor FP1E — Best Zigbee Pick

The FP1E is the globally available, wired successor to the original China-only FP1. It uses 60 GHz mmWave radar over Zigbee 3.0, covers about 6 m at a 120° field of view, and works natively with both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT — meaning zero cloud dependency if you already have a Zigbee coordinator. It also acts as a Zigbee router, strengthening your mesh rather than just consuming it.

This is the right sensor for bathrooms, small offices, and utility rooms where you just need a reliable occupied/empty state without caring about who is sitting where. There is no multi-zone positioning, no multi-person tracking, and no light sensor, but the detection accuracy at this Zigbee price point is hard to beat. Pair it with a separate lux sensor if your automations depend on brightness. If you already run a solid Zigbee hub, this slots in without drama.

Strengths

• Native Zigbee 3.0 — pairs directly with ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT, no vendor cloud ever touched
• 60 GHz true mmWave, 120° FOV across roughly 50 m² — fast and accurate for single-zone rooms
• Acts as a Zigbee router, useful if you’re building out a mesh

Drawbacks

• No light sensor — you’ll need a separate lux source if your automations condition on brightness
• No zones, no multi-person tracking; full HomeKit or Matter functionality requires an Aqara hub as a bridge

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Aqara FP300 — Best Wire-Free Option

The FP300 is the sensor to reach for when running a USB cable is not practical. It runs on batteries with a rated two-year lifespan, which it achieves partly by pairing a 60 GHz mmWave module with a PIR sensor: the PIR wakes the mmWave only when motion is detected, preserving battery life without sacrificing stationary presence detection. Beyond occupancy, it integrates temperature, humidity, and light sensors in a single package.

Protocol flexibility is a genuine differentiator. The FP300 supports both Zigbee and Thread, and switching between the two is straightforward. In Zigbee mode it pairs fully with Zigbee2MQTT, exposing a comprehensive set of entities and configuration parameters. In Thread mode it runs as a Matter over Thread device — useful if you have already invested in a Thread border router. ZHA support was still in progress via custom quirk at the time of writing, so Zigbee2MQTT is the more reliable Zigbee path right now.

Strengths

• Battery-powered with a two-year rated lifespan — no cable, no power socket needed
• Dual-protocol Zigbee/Thread; full Zigbee2MQTT support with deep configuration options
• Combines 60 GHz mmWave presence with temperature, humidity, and light in one device

Drawbacks

• ZHA support was still relying on a custom quirk in early 2026 — check the Zigbee2MQTT device list before buying if you are a ZHA user
• No zone detection; higher price than the FP1E for what is essentially single-zone presence plus environmental sensors

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SONOFF SNZB-06P — Best Budget Entry Point

If you want to test whether mmWave presence detection improves your automations before committing to a mid-range spend, the SNZB-06P is the place to start. It uses a 5.8 GHz radar module — technically microwave rather than true millimeter-wave — with a detection range of up to 4 m at 100°. It ships with a magnetic mount and a USB-C cable, snaps onto a metal surface immediately, and pairs with ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT in minutes. A built-in illuminance sensor provides coarse light-level readings (dark / medium / bright) that are immediately useful in lighting automations. Sensitivity threshold and detection timeout are configurable directly in Zigbee2MQTT. Note: SONOFF has also released an updated SNZB-06P24 variant using a 24 GHz module — Amazon search results may surface both; the 24 GHz model offers improved micro-movement detection if you can find it at a similar price.

Because it is a wired Zigbee device, it also acts as a Zigbee router, helping strengthen a mesh. The caveat is that “true mmWave” purists will note the 5.8 GHz frequency is not the same as 24 GHz or 60 GHz radar — detection of very fine micro-movements like breathing is less reliable than on the Aqara sensors above.

Strengths

• Budget price with genuine stationary presence detection — a clear upgrade over PIR at minimal cost
• Native Zigbee 3.0 with configurable sensitivity and timeout in Zigbee2MQTT; includes a light sensor
• Acts as a Zigbee router; magnetically mounts anywhere a USB-C cable can reach

Drawbacks

• 5.8 GHz radar, not true mmWave — fine for basic occupancy, less reliable for detecting someone sitting absolutely still
• Some users report the sensor getting stuck reporting a room as occupied after it is empty; placement and sensitivity tuning usually fixes this but it is not fully plug-and-play

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Everything Presence One — Best for ESPHome Tinkerers

The Everything Presence One is built by a father-and-son team and is the closest thing this category has to a community-designed reference sensor. It pairs a 24 GHz DFRobot mmWave module with an industrial-grade Panasonic PIR sensor, plus temperature, humidity, and ambient light sensors on the same board. The PIR handles fast entry detection across up to 12 m; the mmWave covers stationary presence up to 9 m. It also functions as a Bluetooth proxy, extending Home Assistant’s Bluetooth tracking range.

It ships pre-loaded with ESPHome, so adoption into Home Assistant is essentially instant for anyone already on ESPHome. Distance, sensitivity, and latency are all configurable directly from Home Assistant — no vendor app, no cloud account, no intermediary. This is the purest local-first option in this roundup. The tradeoff: it does not support detection zones or multi-target tracking (see the Everything Presence Lite for that), and tuning mmWave sensitivity takes experimentation to get right for your specific room layout.

Note on availability: the Everything Presence One is sold through the Everything Smart shop directly and is not reliably listed on Amazon marketplaces. Check the official store at everythingsmart.io for current stock — this is the only reliable purchase route for UK and EU buyers.

Strengths

• 100% local ESPHome — full control, no cloud, direct HA integration via ESPHome add-on
• Combines 24 GHz mmWave, PIR, temperature, humidity, light, and Bluetooth proxy in one device
• All detection parameters configurable directly in Home Assistant; open-source firmware

Drawbacks

• No zone detection and no multi-target tracking — it reports a single whole-room occupied/clear state
• Requires ESPHome familiarity; sensitivity tuning takes real-world experimentation, and large rooms often need two units for full coverage
• Not sold on Amazon — purchase direct from everythingsmart.io only

How to choose the right sensor for your room

Start with the question of power. If you cannot run a cable to the mounting spot, the Aqara FP300 is currently the only battery-powered mmWave option worth recommending — everything else on this list needs permanent USB power. If power is available, the next question is zones. The FP2 is the only plug-and-play option with genuine zone-aware multi-person tracking across a large space. For single-room occupied/empty detection over Zigbee, the FP1E is more reliable and more local-control-friendly than the FP2. The SNZB-06P is where to start if you are not sure mmWave will actually improve your setup and want to test the concept cheaply. The Everything Presence One is for users who are already running ESPHome and want a single device to own entirely, configure completely, and never worry about vendor clouds or app dependencies again.

If you’re building out a broader local-control setup alongside your presence sensors, our guides on local smart thermostats and Matter + Thread smart bulbs cover the next logical pieces of the puzzle.

How we chose

We focused exclusively on sensors with verified Home Assistant integration paths that avoid mandatory ongoing cloud dependency. Products were assessed against: protocol (Zigbee, Wi-Fi + local, ESPHome), confirmed availability on major marketplaces, real-world detection behaviour reported across user forums and independent reviews, and configurability within Home Assistant or Zigbee2MQTT. We did not include cloud-only sensors or devices whose HA integration routes all traffic through a vendor server. Specs and integration details were cross-checked against Zigbee2MQTT device pages, the Home Assistant integrations catalogue, and manufacturer documentation.

Do mmWave presence sensors work through walls?

Yes, to a degree — especially sensors operating at 24 GHz and 60 GHz. mmWave radar can pass through drywall and wood, which means a sensor mounted close to a shared interior wall may detect movement in an adjacent room and report false occupancy. Keep sensors away from shared walls or reduce the maximum detection distance in the sensor’s configuration to limit the effective range to your room only.

Do I need a hub to use these sensors with Home Assistant?

It depends on the sensor. The SONOFF SNZB-06P, Aqara FP1E, and Aqara FP300 (in Zigbee mode) pair directly with any Zigbee coordinator running ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT — no separate hub needed beyond your coordinator dongle or hub. The Aqara FP2 is a Wi-Fi device that is added to Home Assistant via the HomeKit Controller integration. The Everything Presence One connects over your local Wi-Fi network using ESPHome, with no hub required at all. If you’re still choosing a coordinator, our Zigbee hub guide walks through the options.

Is 5.8 GHz (SONOFF SNZB-06P) really mmWave?

Strictly, no. True millimeter-wave radar operates in the 24 GHz–60 GHz range, where wavelengths are short enough to resolve micro-movements like breathing. The SNZB-06P uses a 5.8 GHz microwave module, which is how it reaches its budget price. It detects stationary occupancy reliably in most rooms, but it is less sensitive to very subtle movement than a 60 GHz sensor like the Aqara FP1E or FP2. For most lighting and climate automations the practical difference is small; for detecting someone sleeping or sitting very still, the higher-frequency sensors have a real edge. If PIR is still the right fit for some locations, our guide to Zigbee motion sensors covers the best options there.