EASY Motion Activated Staircase Lighting - NO PROGRAMING!!!

today's video I'm going to walk you through how to install what I would consider to be the easiest possible way to set up motion activated lighting which will require absolutely no programming or complex wiring to kick things off I first had to figure out what type of diffuser channel to go with now you could pretty much use any type of aluminum profile for this project but I'll be going with one of my favorites from uzata because you can get it in two meter long sections which will be a little bit easier to work with for bigger installs like this one next I had to decide on a method of attaching these to the walls there's many different ways you could go about doing this but I'll be using some removable 3M pads that I've used in other projects which are still holding strong after eight months and things will probably make a little bit more sense further along but for this type of lighting I personally think it's going to look best with the light source pointed down towards the floor versus out this means that they're going to need to be hung on their side like you're seeing here now this project would be a little too easy if all I did was install things only by the stairs right here so in hopes of making the video a little more interesting I'll be going along the landing at the bottom making the turn going up the stairs making another 90 degree Bend and then down the hall this will require me to cut the aluminum profiles down to size as well as making some angle build cuts for this I'll use my miter saw with a regular blade that it came with but if you don't have access to one of these a hacksaw would work just as well but take a little bit more time I'll start on the landing and install the first section of the profile that I cut down to size for this I'm not going to take things all the way to the corner and again I'll leave a gap in putting up the second channel for the section that's going to be making its way up next to the stairs I eyeballed the angle needed and made the cut I'm not too worried about this being super precise as you'll see why later in the video I then did the same thing for the second section needed to make it to the top Landing now once this profile is in place I'm going to then turn my attention to the actual lighting aspect of the build so very recently I completely geeked out when I heard that a company called a car was going to be releasing their first ever LED strip and I wasn't even necessarily excited about the LED strip itself but more so the potential that it had when combined with their many different types of sensors controllers switches and more so here is their all new LED strip called the acara T1 getting things opened up you'll first see the LED strip the instructions the controller and finally the power supply now taking a closer look at the strip there's a couple very important fun things to point out the first is that they've included separate LEDs for a tunable white apart from the RGB pixels not having this at least for me would have been a deal breaker next is that these can be extended up to 10 meters in length while using only one power supply this can be accomplished by attaching up to eight additional one meter long strips they offer like you're seeing here which can be slid into place at the end of our main unit's 2 meter long section and finally there are cut points every 20 centimeters or approximately eight inches and speaking of cut points this is one of the first products I've actually seen advertised that you can cut and reattach sections using third-party products I wanted to test this out so I ordered some five pin connectors meant for 12 millimeter wide strips to see if it actually worked so in case this is something that you might also want to try doing I'll go through the quick steps first take the strip and make the cut and since these do have the silicone covering over the LEDs I'll just use my hands to peel it back slightly and cut it off to expose the copper pads then you can slide the exposed copper pads into one end of the clip followed by inserting the included wires into the other side Circle openings complete I'll use the pliers to push down the metal pieces on top [Music] next you can do the exact same thing for the other side to reattach our cut section foreign things in and turn it on to quickly make sure everything's still working and if you're new to LEDs most strips do have some type of Arrow indicating what direction they need to go make sure you're mindful of this and that the arrows are always going in the same direction away from the controller now going back to the stairs I'm going to start putting the LED strip in the aluminum profiles and since I plan on having the power supply and controller start at the top I'm technically working backwards since this area will be where the strip ends and as far as the first corner I'm using the connector clip method that I just went over to make the turn again a lot of different ways this could be done but this way was pretty easy considering it didn't require any soldering from here it's pretty simple as I'm just connecting my one meter long extension pieces together as I work my way up the stairs oh I'm now back at the top and the reason I didn't want to do all the diffuser channels first is because I didn't know where things would be in terms of cut points for this next corner and after lining things up I had another idea I wanted to test out I went ahead and put up the diffuser channels around the corners just like I did at the bottom but this time instead of cutting things and using the connector pieces I wanted to see how things would work if I did absolutely nothing and without much trouble I was able to guide the LED strip along the wall making the 90 degree turn having the little extra space between the diffuser channels for sure helped with this since the turn wasn't as sharp as it would have been if they were butted up right next to each other from here it was just a matter of hanging up the rest of the profiles and lights inside I did end up using the entire 10 meters that these can handle and right here is where I'm attaching the beginning 2 meter main LED strip that will be connected to the controller and power supply foreign next I went back and quickly snapped all the milky white diffuser covers onto the aluminum profiles and since I made all the cuts with these on everything should fit perfectly foreign there is a lot more left in this video but at this point I did want to at least mention that you could very well just throw up a few fake plants in the corners and quite possibly be more than happy with how things look and leave it as is however I know with not too much more work I can make things look a lot more professional so I'm going to keep moving on I went to my local hardware store and after roaming the aisles for 45 minutes I found some corner molding pieces that I thought might be perfect for taking this project to the next level my thought was to use this to conceal the aluminum profiles from site and allow things to blend in much better with the wall to attach these to the diffuser channels I'm going to be using some sticky tape that I found a while ago that'll be perfect for the job this is the same thing that I used five months ago to secure some aluminum channels to my desk and things are still holding strong today so I'll pretty much be making the same cuts on these pieces as I did for the diffusers but I will use these to help clean up the corners I'll cut the ends to 45 degrees so that they'll butt up to each other right here covering up the visible wires thank you then it's just a matter of me doing this all the way until I get to the end these wooden sections did come in eight foot long pieces so this process did go by pretty quickly and this is why I wasn't too concerned about making the bend this way with the LED strip exposed since I already had in mind this approach of being able to cover it up with these corner molding sections now I'm not sure how well this will come across on camera but hopefully you can see how there's some gaps between what we just installed in the actual wall this is normal especially on older homes like we have since the drywall tends to bend and bow over time I'm going to go ahead and paint the wooden pieces the same color as the back wall in hopes of having this be less noticeable and since the colors are pretty similar it should take only one coat in about 15 minutes to complete so painting was definitely the right cause it helps to blend things better but unfortunately it didn't make much of a difference when it came to these visible gaps because of this I ended up going back to the hardware store to pick up some all-purpose Caulking and if you're like me who hasn't done a lot of this type of work paper towels are your friend and I usually end up going through a couple Rolls by the time everything's said and done but doing this should really give everything that professional look that this project deserves foreign draw I went back and painted everything one more time and even though it was a little extra work I'm super happy I ended up doing it this way because things are starting to look really good now that the gaps are filled in and everything is the same color moving on I now want to go over how I can easily get everything set up to respond to motion you're first going to need one of their hubs which I have here this is the M2 and once you have everything unpacked and plugged in you can go ahead and download the acara app once you're signed in go ahead and click the plus icon near the top right and hit add accessory then near the bottom right click on HUB M2 the yellow light on the device should be flashing so you can move on to the next step and from here you can enter in your home Wi-Fi information give it a minute to go through the connection process and just like that your Hub is up and running now for getting your LED strip connected make sure it's plugged in and go back to the app and click the plus icon and again add accessory under the lighting section on the left you should see the T1 listed next it's going to have you choose what Hub you want to assign it to and you should see the M2 that you can select I then have the power button down for 5 seconds waited and after about 10 seconds it should alert you that the accessory was added successfully successfully you can give it a name and just like that the LED strip is up and running and last but not least you're going to need to set up the actual motion sensor and what's awesome about these is they're completely wireless there's no need for these to be plugged in so you can literally place them anywhere you want with an expected battery life of five years to get this connected first remove the plastic piece on the bottom and then on the app hit the plus icon and then add accessory on the left hand side click sensor and then find the P1 again select the Hub you want to pair it with and then in the back of the sensor push and hold the button for five seconds wait and then after about 10 seconds you'll be alerted that the motion sensor is connected you can give it a name and then you're all set now I did go ahead and add one more sensor so that we'll have one designated to be at the bottom and a second to be placed at the top of the stairs we can now move on to the final step where everything begins to come together first let's go into the automation Tab and click add automation we're presented with a simple if then scenario click on ADD and then find and select motion sensor bottom we're then given different options for which I'll be selecting motion is detected but if you only want wanted to use these at night since these sensors also can detect brightness levels you could very well choose the motion is detected and brightness is below option if that's something you wanted to play around with once I have the if motion is detected I now have to tell the lights what to do for this I'll click add find the LED strip and again I'm presented with different options for what I want the LED strip to do I know for sure that I want it to turn on so I'll choose that first I'll go back in and this time I'm going to want to set the color temperature and brightness to whatever levels I want for this I'm going to choose a warm white color at 100 brightness you can then click on Save and then give the automation a name next I'll go back in and add a different automation this time I want to select if no motion has been detected in over option I'll change it to the shortest time that's currently available which is one minute and for my then statement I want to choose that the lights turn off so what I basically just did in a couple clicks is to say if motion is detected at the bottom of the stairs I want the LED strip to turn on Warm White at 100 brightness and if no motion has been detected at the bottom of the stairs in over a minute I want the lights to automatically turn off once this is complete I'm going to set up the exact same automations but this time it'll be for the top motion sensor and finally if you haven't done so already go into the LED strip and under settings click on function setting and then strip length this is where you can tell the app how long your LED strip is so that all the animations you can choose from and segments you can customize will display correctly so we're getting close to being done but there are still a couple things left to do to add a little bit of variety instead of just plain looking walls I'll put a couple fake plants in the corners and as far as hiding the wires at the beginning until I get around to fishing things through the wall to the bedroom behind for a clean look I'll just use some cable tracks to make it blend in as best as possible it's not a perfect solution but it does look better than having a mess of cords in the floor next I have to decide where to put the motion sensors and again being that these are completely wireless I can move them around to different spots until I find a location that works best for my setup for now I'll just set the top motion sensor on this little Edge since it should be able to pick up motion from someone coming out of the bathroom at night or from a bedroom down the hall further back and as far as the bottom sensor I'll try placing it at the bottom of the stairs tucked away by the left side of the wall like you're seeing here my hope is for it to not pick up motion from the front door opening and closing but instead someone having to put their foot on the first step to trigger the lights to turn on now before getting into the final pictures and videos I wanted to First do some test runs during the day to get a better feel for the response time and to determine if I needed move the motion sensor somewhere else and for this first try it detected my motion the moment my foot hit the bottom step and the lights almost instantly turned on this is exactly what I was wanting so I'm happy with the placement of our first sensor foreign moving to the top of the stairs I'm going to quickly try coming out of the bathroom door a couple times to make sure that my motion is detected and that the lights come on and again I was more than happy with how this scenario worked as it did detect my movement after taking one step into the Hall finally I wanted to see if the same sensor in the same position was able to pick up movement from someone coming out of a bedroom for their back and just like all the other examples it did work flawlessly and detected my motion as soon as I came around the corner so that about does it for this project but I'll leave you with some final videos of the setup in action thank you all so much for watching and as always I hope you have a blessed day [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Chris Maher

Views: 2,212,408

Keywords: stair lights, stair lights led, motion activated light, stair lighting installation, stair lighting motion sensor, stair lighting controller, stair lighting installation sensor, stair lighting sensor, staircase lighting with motion sensor, staircase lighting ideas, motion activated stair lights, motion activated staircase lights, aqara, aqara t1, aqara motion sensor, aqara smart home, easy stair lighting, diy, EASY Motion Activated Staircase Lighting, no programming

Id: zxQ91Uupy9I

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 08 2023