HLKRadarTool APP FAQ

• Get the app
• There are multiple versions of android (pgyer and play store), which one should I use?
• Tuning radar parameters
• Setting the maximum dectet distance
• Meaning of Sensor Properties

We've tried to put some information here considering that many people have some confusion about getting started with Hilink's app.

Get the app

Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hlk.hlkradartool

Apple APP Store: ‎HLKRadarTool on the App Store (apple.com)

There are multiple versions of android (pgyer and play store), which one should I use?

Regarding the Android APP for HilinkRadarTool, here's some of our experience:

• Hilink was not on the play store early on, only a link to an apk download (that's not actually the official site, just a place where apk downloads are available, which isn't even very safe), and we've had the pleasure of relaying some user suggestions to hilink, and luckily there is finally a play store version.
• pgyer's site shouldn't be continued by the average user, that's just a temporary strategy. Or a place to release beta previews.

If you were using the apk version, we would now recommend this play store one if possible. This is because there is a chance that the apk could be downloaded unofficially, or there could be some sort of hidden danger of it being updated to something else weird. (pgyer is just a distribution service where everyone can upload their apk to share)

Tuning radar parameters

athua@Home Assistant Forum:

Tweaking the sensitivity for each distance gate is a little tricky. Make sure that Engineering mode is turned on and you should see the graphs in the HLK app. The pink/red line on the graphs is the energy value (its like movement percentage, the higher the value the more movement is required before the target is detected) set for each distance gate and the blue line is what the sensor is detecting. Once the blue line goes above the pink/red line, the target is detected.

You can also reduce the number of detection points (max is 8 which is the furthest range of approx 6m) if you don’t want to detect moving or static targets up to the max distance (ie. set it to 5 will cause the sensor to detect up to gate 5 which is 3.75m if gate distance is set to 0.75m).

I suggest having the app open and the graphs displayed and walking around the room to see how the blue line moves as it detects you being still or moving around.

Setting the maximum dectet distance

There are several ways to do it:

• Control the maximum distance by setting the threshold and maximum number of detection points in the parameters of the APP. For example, set 0.75 Distance, 6 points, max distance = 0.75mx6

video demo

• Or you can set 100 (dynamic and static) in the specific settings for sensitivity, and the detection of this area will be turned off.

Meaning of Sensor Properties

PETER KAY From ESPHome Group:

For those of us that are not fully up to speed on mmWave sensors, and particularly the large amount of entities they provide (your devices particularly, I've bought 2), can you do a simple rundown of each of the entities, what they are, and some suggestions over how we can use them in a practical sense...？

athua@ha forum:

The key entities that you should be concerned with are: Presence, Moving Target and Still Target.

The Presence value becomes ‘Detected’ when either the Moving Target or Still Target is detected and is the one to use if you want to control lights for example. So when someone enters the room or moves around, the Moving Target value becomes ‘Detected’. Once they stay still, the Still Target becomes ‘Detected’. Either of the sets the Presence to ‘Detected’ which can be set to trigger the light turning on. There is an ‘Unmanned duration’ setting that can be set from the HLKRadar app and that sets the time when the Presence value will return to ‘Clear’ when both Moving Target and Still Target has become 'Clear.

The LD2410 radar is really only able to determine the distance the target is away from it and it is not able to determine precise location in the room. It can also only handle effectively one main target (the strongest signal it detects).

If you wish to try to detect multiple people in the same room, the LD2450 radar sensor (SCREEK 2a) is required (up to 3 targets) but that is still in beta testing as it’s multi-person target handling is not fully working on the current firmware from HiLink.

Screek:

The radar has a lot of parameters which are specific to it and these parameters can be used in detail to split the parameters inside. This can be confusing at first, I feel the same way. For the LD2410C, since I'm a bit more familiar with it now, I can briefly try to explain it, and if possible, I think I should do a proper documentation on these issues. - One of the main parameters is divided into static and moving data, which is characteristic of radar work, and checking static tends to be shorter and more challenging. But they're as literal as on, if you're sitting and not changing substantially, it becomes static energy. - This is broken down into dynamic distance and static distance, which is the distance they detect that is currently causing the threshold to trigger the output, and energy. These values can be visualized more if you open the HLKRadarTools APP. The radar is divided into segments to continuously scan the target, reads the energy field of each target segment, and decides whether or not to consider a person present based on the sensitivity of the energy field at a preset value.For general, these distance parameters are potentially inaccurate and subject to error. But they can be used as indicative information to reference what distance caused the trigger. In fact, they may be more desirable in HA debugging messages.Generally as automation, you can use Presence as a judgment call. And for something like PIR, you can use a moving target trigger to activate an event triggered by an activity.But most of the use is to observe the change in their general values, based on the validity of the trigger, and if not, use the APP to adjust the parameters of the LD2410C to filter out targets that shouldn't be there.