Founder of TOMMY here. I'm glad you like the ESPHome support. It was one of the most requested features before implementation.
Regarding the lifetime license for Discord members, that's primarily to ensure that beta testers aren't being "used" for testing and then asked to pay. A lot of my users had stories about that with previous companies, and I wanted to give a promise that wasn't going to be the case here. And building a community where people help each other with device placement, hardware suggestions, etc. is a nice addition.
Anyway, I think this project is really cool, francescopace. Many have asked for TOMMY to be open-sourced, so that's definitely something you're going to have success with. I wish you all the best!
It's possible to have the devices in-wall, but it might not be that practical as you point out. Or at least they would have to be taken out once for flashing, then OTA updates would reduce or eliminate the need for reflashing further.
The real benefit from the sensors working through walls in my opinion is to be able to hide the devices away (e.g. in a closet or drawer) + being able to create zones that crosses walls. Image wanting a zone called 'upstairs', 'downstairs', 'garage' etc. which consists of multiple rooms divided by walls. Instead of having a sensor in each room you might just need one on each side of the total area.
Thanks! I agree with the PiR and mmWave limitations. Right now I think this project can replace motion sensor. Hopefully mmWave when stationary presence detection is added (planned Q1 2026).
Sounds like a great project. Using the Wi-Fi signal directly might work in your case. It would be nice to go back to actually using the bedroom as a place to sleep and not look at the phones all the time :-)
Unfortunately not. Even though the concept is the same, Philips Hue uses Zigbee as the sensing protocol which isn't compatible with the Wi-Fi sensing TOMMY uses.
Thanks, I'm glad you like it! Let me know how it works for you. And if you need any help, feel free to reach out.
A zone is 2 or more devices. So 2 works just fine. Instead of a straight line, image two flashlights pointing at each other. The beam of the flashlight becomes the sensing area.
In the dashboard you can create zones which you put devices into. So you could flash a handful of devices and put them into a "living room" or "upstairs" zone.
Right now it is a requirement that the device running TOMMY (e.g. Home Assistant) and the ESP32 nodes are on the same network. The communication between the ESP32's are peer-to-peer without needing the router, but the data needed for analysis is sent from the sensors to TOMMY through the router.
Yes that would work. They don't need to be connected to the router on Wi-Fi, it can be ethernet too. The ESP's will connect with each other peer-to-peer.
Yes, if I understand you correctly then it already works with that setup.
So you can have the ESP32s over ethernet and it still works as long as it's on the same network as TOMMY (Home Assistant Add-on or Docker). Only thing to keep in mind is that the ESP32s need to have Wi-Fi inbuilt with antenna (either PCB or external).
Does that mean that Tommy is not using SSID at all for it's motion detection? Where is the WiFi network then? Hidden? What about bands and channels? Overlaps? Interference?
Actually, you are right. I confused myself. You would need to have them connected to the same Wi-Fi as that determines the bands and channels they communicate on even though the communication is peer-to-peer.
How are your devices connected exactly? Using ethernet on the subnet your HA instance is on? And are you then able to also connect to a separate Wi-Fi SSID you create for those devices?
Also, are you able to join the Discord channel? Then we can create a thread and go a bit more into depth about your setup.
Thank you for the explanation. Right now I don't have Tommy or any of it's devices configured (yet). I was just trying to determine what's possible and what's not. I do have ethernet throughout the house. Then, I have three Ubiquity AmpliFi dual-band mesh WiFi access points in an ethernet-backboned configuration. I do a lot of Sunshine/Moonlight low-latency high-def video/audio streaming, so for me, the WiFi quality/speed/jitter is of utmost importance. So much so that I removed all Zigbee and most ESP devices and replaced them with similar Z-Wave devices. The very fact that Z-Wave operates on a completely different band enabled me to have both abundance of home automation AND flawless WiFi at the same time. So, now considering what Tommy has to offer, I'm intrigued, but wouldn't want to go through the whole WiFi degradation and rescue again, hence I'm thinking through all the possibilities. The safest thing, for me, would be to have Tommy devices equipped with ethernet and WiFi, have them talk to Home Assistant via ethernet, and have them use their own WiFi SSID/channel for their motion detection. Otherwise, if that's not possible, then I could let them associate with my existing home WiFi, but then I would like to limit them to 2.4GHz band only, so I can have my 5GHz band clean and intact. Simply, that's my home network building policy: move everything that can be moved to ethernet in order to keep WiFi as clean as possible. That's because I already experienced the situation few years back that I just bought the best WiFi access point (x3) that money can buy and I still can't stream flawless 4K in real-time. Well, not anymore.
I can understand that. I used to do a lot of game streaming with Parsec and ended up with a similar setup.
Right now, TOMMY only use Wi-Fi and doesn't support using ethernet for the communication with HA and Wi-Fi for peer-to-peer communication. But that is very possible to implement. Just haven't encountered the use case before now.
I'll probably implement an option for split communication (ethernet, wifi) and then allow users to decide the Wi-Fi channel devices communicate on peer-to-peer. That way you'd have full control over possible interference.
Yes it works outdoor too. Although experimenting with device placement is crucial for good results. I think there are different battery powered ESP32 you can buy. I have some of mine set up with small power banks.
I believe that was the initial paper which really started the Wi-Fi sensing research. Although a lot of research has come after that. It's a really fascinating technology with a whole range of possibilities beyond just motion and presence sensing.
Regarding the lifetime license for Discord members, that's primarily to ensure that beta testers aren't being "used" for testing and then asked to pay. A lot of my users had stories about that with previous companies, and I wanted to give a promise that wasn't going to be the case here. And building a community where people help each other with device placement, hardware suggestions, etc. is a nice addition.
Anyway, I think this project is really cool, francescopace. Many have asked for TOMMY to be open-sourced, so that's definitely something you're going to have success with. I wish you all the best!
- Mike