Setting up zones on the KL MZ presence sensor: draw, teach, hide sources of interference

With zones you divide a room into areas that the KL MZ presence sensor reports separately: sofa, desk, dining table, bed. That way the light at the desk switches on while the reading lamp at the sofa stays off. Here you can read which zones there are, how to draw them or teach them on site, and how to hide sources of interference and reflections.

In short: which zones does the KL MZ presence sensor have?

The KL MZ has three kinds of zones and a boundary, 13 in total. Detection zones report whether someone is in an area. Stay zones are bound to a detection zone and hold the presence where people sit or lie still for a long time. Interference zones hide spots where something is moving that is not a person. The boundary defines where the room ends.

Before you create zones

1. Set the installation type. Under Settings, choose “Ceiling” or “Wall / corner”. Changing it later resets all zones, the boundary, and the detection area. Where the presence sensor works best is explained in Mounting a presence sensor.
2. Walk through the room once. The gray area in the radar view shows where the presence sensor has already detected someone. Walk through the whole room several times, and the area grows by itself. Only then do you see whether your zones lie within the covered area.
3. Set a short timeout. With a timeout of a few seconds you see right away during setup whether a zone becomes free.

The KL MZ detects motion up to about 6 m and people at rest up to about 4 m. This matters when choosing the mounting location: mount the presence sensor so that seats and beds are no more than about 4 m away.

Drawing detection zones

1. Click “Zones” in the presence sensor's interface. The menu opens and the zones can be edited. A second click on “Zones” ends editing.
2. Switch on a zone under the detection zones. It appears in the radar view.
3. Drag the zone by its area to the right place and use the handles to give it the right size. On a touchscreen, hold the area for a moment until the zone is highlighted.
4. For slanted areas, use the symbol next to the switch to change from rectangle to polygon. Each corner can be moved individually, and the “+” on an edge inserts a corner, up to eight are possible.
5. Give the zone a name under “Zone names”, for example “Sofa”. It also arrives in your smart home under this name.

Zones may overlap, and one zone can also lie entirely inside another. If one zone covers another, hide the upper one via its color field while you edit the lower one.

Teaching zones on site

Instead of drawing a zone, you can walk it in the room: the presence sensor measures where you are standing and creates the zone from that. This is more accurate than estimating on the screen, because you do not need to know how many meters the sofa is from the presence sensor. Only one person may be in the room while teaching.

Set corners: for areas with clear edges

1. Under “Area”, choose the detection zone and click “Set corners”.
2. Stand at the first corner of the zone and tap “Set point”. Stay where you are until the corner appears with its number in the radar view.
3. Walk to all corners this way, at least three and at most eight.
4. “Done” stores the zone. “Undo last” removes the last corner, and “Cancel” leaves the zone as it was.

Learn dwell: for a seat, a desk, and a bed

1. Under “Area”, choose the detection zone and set the learning time.
2. Click “Learn dwell”, go to the spot, and tap “Start”.
3. While the seconds count down, behave as you will in everyday use: sit, lean back, work at the desk.
4. The zone is created from the measured positions with a small margin. “Done” stores it, and “Restart” measures again.

Stay zones: so the light stays on while you sit still

Anyone who is reading, watching TV, or sleeping sometimes hardly moves for minutes. A stay zone bridges such dropouts: its stay time defines how long the presence sensor waits before it reports a person there as gone.

• Bind the stay zone to the detection zone where people stay, such as the sofa, bed, or desk: in the row of the stay zone, select that detection zone. The detection zone then gets the stay time, and the stay zone is no longer shown as a separate area.
• Home Assistant and other smart home systems only see the detection zones. The stay time works through the bound detection zone.
• Do not bind a detection zone at a door or at the edge of the detection area. Otherwise anyone who leaves the room there still counts as present for the whole stay time.
• If the detection zone is a polygon, the stay time applies within the rectangle enclosing it, which is shown dashed.
• A stay zone without a bound detection zone is a special case you do not need in everyday use.

Interference zones: hiding a fan, a curtain, and a ventilation system

Radar detects every movement, including that of a curtain in front of an open window. In an interference zone the presence sensor evaluates nothing. You can draw interference zones like any other zone or let the presence sensor find them itself:

1. Switch on whatever could interfere: fan, ventilation, window tilted open.
2. Under “Area”, choose the “Room”, set the learning time (60 seconds by default), and click “Learn room”.
3. Leave the room. You have 20 seconds to do so.
4. The presence sensor creates an interference zone for each source of interference, up to four. Stay outside until the learning time has elapsed, otherwise your spot becomes an interference zone too.

A robot vacuum cannot be hidden this way because it travels through the whole room. With a lower sensitivity the presence sensor no longer reacts to it, but then it also detects people sitting still less reliably. Alternatively, ignore the signal in your automation while the robot is cleaning.

The boundary: where the room ends

Radar waves are reflected by glass, mirrors, and smooth surfaces. The presence sensor then shows people in places where nobody is, for example behind the window pane or in the next room. With the boundary you define where the room ends: whatever lies outside occupies no zone and triggers neither presence nor the siren.

1. Under “Area”, choose the “Boundary” and click “Set corners”.
2. If the presence sensor hangs on the wall, the bar first asks whether it sits flat “On a wall” or “In a corner”.
3. Stand in each corner of the room and set a point there. On a wall, you start at a side wall near the presence sensor and end at the other one; in a corner, you walk to all remaining corners of the room once around.
4. “Done” stores the boundary. It lies 30 cm outside your points so that someone close to the wall still counts.

Do not set the boundary too tight. If someone standing in the room is shown in gray in the radar view, the boundary is too far inside at that point.

Timeout per zone

The timeout determines how long a zone stays occupied after nobody is detected there anymore. By default, the “Room timeout” from the settings applies to all zones. If you switch on “Timeout per zone” there, every detection zone gets its own row “Timeout”: from “No delay” through 1 second up to 10 minutes, or “As room”. A short timeout suits the hallway, a long one the reading chair.

Using zones in your smart home

Every active detection zone appears in your smart home under the name you have given it and shows whether someone is currently in it. Stay zones and interference zones do not appear there. In addition, the KL MZ reports the presence in the whole room and the number of people detected, up to four. Via MQTT, Home Assistant creates the detection zones automatically. How to set up the connection is explained in Presence sensor for Home Assistant. You can find an example with two lighting zones in Smart lighting control with the KL MZ presence sensor.

The alarm can also be tied to a zone: the siren then only reacts to presence in this one zone, for example at the patio door.

Frequently asked questions about zones

All data about the device can be found on the product page of the KL MZ presence sensor. The overview of all presence sensors shows which model suits your room.