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Comment by transpute | Hacker News Reader

IEEE 802.11bf aims to standardize through-wall motion sensing for Wi-Fi 7 in 2024, https://www.originwirelessai.com/insights/what-is-the-802-11... & https://www.originwirelessai.com/insights/origins-next-chapt.... It can be done today with custom firmware on low-cost WiFi devices. Over the past decade, hundreds of Wi-Fi sensing papers have been published, for different categories of motion.

> capture tiny, vital movements of human breathing, even when people are not in the line-of-sight of a device ... whole home coverage to detect falls, breathing rates, abnormal behaviors ... Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Security, Health & Wellness, Automotive, and IoT

The images in the DensePose paper are helpful: https://twitter.com/aibreakfast/status/1613550599144091650

Prior HN threads on Wi-Fi 7 Sensing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33758434

Counter-measures: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121918#27133079

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Sign me up for the security system. This seems like a total game changer if it's possible to do real human detection and tracking in a secure location.

2012, https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/seeing-thr...

> The U.K. Ministry of Defence has funded a study to determine whether it could be used to scan buildings during urban warfare. With improvements, Woodbridge says, the device could become sensitive enough to pick up on subtle motions the ribcage makes during breathing, which would allow the radar to detect people who are standing or sitting still.

Enter some weird cyber-defense suit which masks bodily movements when you sit still...

Sounds more like a job for just plain old RF jamming.

I have a weirder utility for it: occupancy sensing in rooms.

If it can detect breathing of humans reliably, then it solves a huge problem in having home automation with automatic lighting - particularly in bathrooms. I've never had a decent bathroom occupancy sensor (they all end up wanting to detect fairly large motions) - the obvious solution is AI with a camera but for obvious reasons no, but if a couple of base stations can localize person positions to rooms in the house (and provide other services) then that kind of solves the whole issue!

Is there anything wrong with mechanical switches, beside the apparent (though negligible for me) improvement in comfort?

I grew up with a father who was obsessed with the idea that we were wasting electricity by accidentally leaving the lights on sometimes. As a result he's spent probably thousands in attempted energy saving devices which have all not worked and definitely would never save enough compared to the cost of them.

Which is why I think about these things despite this seemingly obvious solution.

And the fact that the guest bathroom when I visit his house still has no light switch but does have a cheap motion sensor which is annoying as hell.

There are a number of mmWave occupancy sensors that are more than capable of this. The biggest issue is the delay introduced in most smart home contexts by Zigbee and the hubs. Matter/Thread should help here.

Existing options: https://smarthomescene.com/reviews/best-mmwave-human-presenc...

The Aqara FP2 should be out in Q2 with Matter support and be a nice upgrade. It can segment a room into multiple spaces and detect 5 people.

"Please drink verification can to continue."

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