The old smart light problem: you walk into a room, the light turns on, you sit down to read, three minutes later the room goes dark because the PIR sensor decided you had left. Passive infrared sensors track heat and motion, and reading in an armchair is neither. The new fix is 60 GHz mmWave radar. It maps the room in three dimensions, picks up the tiny movements of a chest rising and falling, and knows which corner of the sofa you are actually in. Pair a couple of radar modules with the right Android control app, and a room can wake, dim, and follow you without ever asking you to wave your arms at the ceiling.
The catch is that radar hardware is only half the setup. The other half is the automation platform that reads the sensor data and tells your bulbs, blinds, and switches what to do. We looked at what seven of the most popular smart home apps on Android actually let you build with radar-based presence detection, and where each one falls apart.
What to look for in a radar-based presence lighting app
Not every smart home app treats mmWave sensors as first-class citizens. Before picking one, check for these:
- Native mmWave sensor integrations, or at minimum ESPHome / Zigbee2MQTT support that lets you pull in radar modules from Aqara, Tuya, or DIY ESP32 boards.
- Zone or per-area presence entities, so a sensor can report “corner of the sofa” instead of just “someone in the room”.
- Fine-grained automation triggers: staying still for N seconds, entering a zone, leaving a zone, occupancy above a threshold.
- Local execution. If the automation runs in the cloud, a two-second delay becomes a three-second delay, and the lights stop feeling instant.
- Ecosystem breadth. The app has to talk to your bulbs and switches too, not just the sensors.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Free plan | Starting price/mo | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Home Assistant | Full radar automation, local control | Free | Free | mmWave first-class via ESPHome / Zigbee2MQTT |
| Aqara Home | Turnkey Aqara FP1E / FP2 setups | Free | Free | Cloud-first, best if you buy the hardware from Aqara |
| Google Home | Sensor triggers on Nest / Matter devices | Free | Free (Nest Aware from around $8) | Radar via Matter occupancy sensors only |
| Amazon Alexa | Voice-first routines | Free | Free | Occupancy triggers work but zones are limited |
| SmartThings | Aqara + Samsung ecosystem | Free | Free | Solid, but automations feel dated |
| Philips Hue | Hue bulbs and Secure sensors | Free | Free | Hue’s own motion sensors are PIR, not radar, use as a target ecosystem |
| Hubitat | Local-only Z-Wave / Zigbee power users | Free (with hub) | Free after hub | Deep automation, ugly UI |
The apps
1. Home Assistant, best for taking radar automation seriously
Home Assistant is the app most enthusiasts pick the moment they buy a mmWave sensor. On Android it acts as a companion to a local Home Assistant server, and that server is where the real work happens. mmWave modules from Aqara (FP1E, FP2), Tuya, and DIY ESP32 boards running ESPHome all show up as full presence entities with individual zones. The app then lets you build automations like “when the reading-corner zone reports occupied for more than five seconds, dim the floor lamp to 40 percent and leave the ceiling light off”.
Where it falls short: The learning curve is steep. Getting radar zones dialled in means editing YAML at least once, and the UI mixes newer Lovelace dashboards with older config screens. Setup is a weekend, not an afternoon.
Pricing:
- Free: everything, including radar sensor integrations, zones, automations, and dashboards
- Paid: Home Assistant Cloud runs about $8 per month for remote access and Alexa / Google Home linking, and is optional
Platforms: Android, iOS, Web
Bottom line: Pick this if you want your lighting to actually respond to a person sitting still, and you enjoy the tinkering it takes to make that happen.
2. Aqara Home, best for a turnkey mmWave setup
Aqara Home is the shortest path to radar-based lighting. Aqara sells the FP1E and FP2 sensors, both 60 GHz mmWave, and its own app pairs them in a few taps. The FP2 supports up to 30 detection zones per sensor, and each zone becomes its own trigger inside Aqara’s automation engine. If your bulbs are Aqara or work with Matter, you get zone-based scenes without ever leaving the app.
Where it falls short: Automations feel less flexible than Home Assistant’s. Cloud dependency means Aqara’s servers going down takes your automations with them. The FP2 also relies on the app’s cloud for its multi-zone data unless you route it through Home Assistant.
Pricing:
- Free: full app, all sensor pairings, cloud automations
- Paid: none for the app itself; hardware is the cost, with sensors starting under $60
Platforms: Android, iOS
Bottom line: Pick this if you want radar-based lighting to work by dinner tonight and you are fine buying Aqara hardware to get there.
3. Google Home, best for Matter-only households
Google Home finally added first-class support for Matter occupancy sensors in the last major rewrite. Any Matter-certified mmWave sensor now shows up next to your lights and speakers, and you can build “if room is occupied then turn on scene” routines that run locally on a Nest Hub. That is the good news. The less good news is that Google Home still treats occupancy as a single boolean per device. Multi-zone radar from an FP2 collapses into “someone in the room” once it reaches Google.
Where it falls short: No per-zone triggers. Automation editor is intentionally simplified, so anything conditional beyond “if X then Y” quickly hits a wall. Nest Aware, at around $8 per month, is optional for lighting but often nudged.
Pricing:
- Free: routines, sensor pairing, most automations
- Paid: Nest Aware subscription for camera history, not needed for radar lighting
Platforms: Android, iOS
Bottom line: Pick this if you already live in the Nest ecosystem and want radar sensors to just show up next to everything else, without the extra layers.
4. Amazon Alexa, best for voice-first routines
Amazon Alexa treats occupancy sensors as a normal trigger inside its Routines editor. Add a radar sensor via Matter and you can wire it to any Alexa-compatible bulb, plug, or speaker. Routines also chain nicely with voice, so “presence detected in the kitchen after 10 PM” can dim the lights and start a playlist without a shout.
Where it falls short: Like Google Home, Alexa collapses zones. Latency is also higher because more of the automation runs in AWS, and Alexa’s Routines UI still buries anything conditional under several menus.
Pricing:
- Free: all Routines and sensor pairing
- Paid: none for lighting; some music tiers cost extra
Platforms: Android, iOS
Bottom line: Pick this if you already run Alexa everywhere and mostly want radar to make the lights match your voice habits.
5. SmartThings, best for the Samsung + Aqara stack
SmartThings is a solid choice if you have a Samsung phone or already own a SmartThings hub. Aqara’s FP2 exposes its zones through the SmartThings Matter integration, and SmartThings Routines can react to individual zones the way Home Assistant does. The app is also one of the few that handles Zigbee radar sensors directly without needing an extra bridge.
Where it falls short: The Routines editor was rebuilt a couple of years ago and still feels rough. Complex conditions require nested Routines that get hard to trace. Some legacy Zigbee sensors need the old Groovy IDE, which Samsung has been sunsetting for a while.
Pricing:
- Free: full app, hub pairings, Routines
- Paid: none for radar lighting
Platforms: Android, iOS
Bottom line: Pick this if you own SmartThings hardware or a recent Samsung phone, and you already trust the ecosystem.
6. Philips Hue, best as a lighting target rather than a sensor host
Philips Hue is worth including for a slightly different reason. Hue’s own motion sensors are still PIR, so the app cannot host a radar sensor directly. What it can do is act as the target for whatever radar setup you have. Home Assistant, Aqara, Google Home, and Alexa all speak to Hue reliably, and the Hue app remains the best place to design the actual scenes those platforms then fire.
Where it falls short: No native radar. Anything zone-based has to be built in another app and pushed to Hue. Hue’s own automations remain time and motion based, which is exactly the limitation radar was supposed to fix.
Pricing:
- Free: full app and scene design
- Paid: Hue bulbs and sensors, from around $20 per bulb
Platforms: Android, iOS
Bottom line: Keep the Hue app around for the bulbs and scenes, and let a smarter platform trigger them.
7. Hubitat, best for the local-only power user
Hubitat is the one where the automation engine runs entirely on a local hub and the phone app is a light window into it. Radar sensors reach Hubitat through Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Matter, and Rule Machine handles branching automations that would take screens of screens to build elsewhere. Nothing leaves the house.
Where it falls short: The Android app is not the point. Rule Machine’s UI feels like it was designed for a control panel from 2016. Hubitat also requires buying a hub, unlike Home Assistant, which will run on a spare Raspberry Pi.
Pricing:
- Free: full software
- Paid: Hubitat Elevation hub, around $150 one-time, with optional cloud backup
Platforms: Android, iOS, Web
Bottom line: Pick this if you want local execution without touching YAML, and you are willing to look past a dated interface.
How to pick the right one
- If you want the strongest radar automation and are ready to tinker: Home Assistant.
- If you want a fast, hardware-first path: Aqara Home with FP2 sensors.
- If your household lives in Nest / Google: Google Home with Matter mmWave sensors.
- If Alexa is already how you control the house: Amazon Alexa.
- If you own SmartThings gear or a recent Galaxy phone: SmartThings.
- If you already own Hue bulbs: keep Philips Hue as the scene layer and use another app for the sensors.
- If you want local-only and can accept the older UI: Hubitat.
FAQ
What is the difference between PIR and radar-based presence detection?
PIR sensors detect changes in infrared heat, so they only fire when something warm moves. Radar sensors emit a 60 GHz signal and read the reflections, which means they can detect breathing and micro-movements. That is why radar keeps the lights on while you read still.
Do radar-based sensors work with Google Home?
Yes, if the sensor exposes a Matter occupancy cluster. The Aqara FP2 and several DIY ESPHome radar boards fit that description. Google Home treats them as standard occupancy devices, though it will not surface individual zones.
Can I build radar-based lighting without a hub?
You can start with a Matter-only setup: a Matter-certified radar sensor, Matter bulbs, and either Google Home or Alexa. It works, but you lose zone-level detail. A hub-based setup with Home Assistant or Hubitat is where multi-zone radar really pays off.
Is a radar sensor a privacy problem?
Radar does not record video or audio. It reports whether something is in a zone and how it is moving, which is a much smaller data footprint than a camera. Local execution through Home Assistant or Hubitat keeps that data on your network entirely.
Which mmWave sensor pairs best with these apps?
The Aqara FP2 is the most commonly recommended in 2026 because of its 30-zone reporting and Matter support. DIY builders often prefer the LD2410 or LD2450 modules on an ESP32, flashed with ESPHome. Both routes work with Home Assistant, SmartThings, Google Home, and Alexa via Matter.
