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How to Set Up Shelly Presence Gen4’s Multi-Person Sensor in Home Assistant

By Freedom251 Team · · 12 min read

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To add Shelly Presence Gen4 to Home Assistant, power the USB-C sensor, put it on your network, add the Shelly integration under Settings > Devices & services, then configure and calibrate its room and detection zones. Home Assistant can use the resulting occupancy entities for dashboards and automations.

The sensor is a room-level mmWave radar, not an identity system. Shelly documents up to six simultaneously detected people, up to 10 customized zones and coverage up to 42 m². It can report occupancy, tracks and zones, but it does not by itself tell Home Assistant that a specific named person is present.

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What Shelly Presence Gen4 adds to Home Assistant

Shelly Presence Gen4 continuously scans a room with mmWave radar. Its useful output is whether an area is occupied, how many targets are being tracked and which configured zone contains activity. Shelly’s product documentation describes capacity for up to six separate people at the same time and up to 10 customized detection zones, with a stated coverage area of up to 42 m².

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That makes it suitable for automations such as turning lights on when a workspace is occupied, keeping ventilation running while people remain in a room, or switching a dashboard between occupied and clear states. The sensor must remain powered; it is specified as a 5 V USB-C device rather than a battery sensor.

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What it cannot establish on its own

A radar detection is not a person identity. Shelly’s documented output covers room presence, tracking and zones. It does not create Home Assistant Person entities with names such as “Alex” or “Sam.” For named presence, Home Assistant normally relies on a separate device_tracker, such as one created by the Companion app after location access is granted. You can combine that identity signal with the Shelly room-occupancy signal, but the radar alone cannot make that association.

Before you install it

Equipment and prerequisites

  • Shelly Presence Gen4.
  • A compatible 5 V USB-C power supply and cable.
  • A Home Assistant installation on the same reachable network as the sensor.
  • A phone or computer for initial Wi-Fi setup and access to the local device interface.
  • A planned mounting position with a clear radar view of the room.

Use a continuously powered outlet. If the sensor is placed behind furniture, inside a cabinet or where a large object blocks its view, the nominal coverage figure will not describe the usable area in your room.

Published specifications that affect planning

Characteristic Published value How to use it
Simultaneous people Up to 6 Plan multi-occupant automations around room occupancy and tracking; do not treat this as named-person recognition.
Customized zones Up to 10 Divide a room into meaningful areas such as desk, sofa or doorway.
Coverage Up to 42 m² Use the published area as a ceiling, then validate the actual room after mounting and calibration.
Power 5 V USB-C Provide continuous power at the installation point.
num_tracks API range 1–10 Set the tracking count deliberately; the API maximum is not a promise of six-person identity recognition.
Mounting-height setting 0–5 m Enter the actual installation height in the device interface.
Minimum detection height 0–2.9 m Use this to exclude low-level activity or define the lower detection boundary.
Maximum detection height 0.1–5 m Use this to define the upper boundary for detections.

Choose and prepare the mounting position

Give the radar a clear view

Mount the unit where its field of view covers the area you want to automate. Avoid placing it immediately behind metal, dense shelving or other obstructions. A position that sees the entire room may be less useful than one aimed at the zones that matter to your automations, so decide whether you need whole-room occupancy or precise areas such as a work desk and a doorway.

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Record the physical settings

Before opening the configuration page, note the mounting height, whether the device is tilted and whether it is mounted upside down. The interface includes settings for mounting height, tilt, flipped mounting when the unit has been rotated 180 degrees, transmission power, sensitivity and minimum and maximum detection height.

Accurate physical values matter. If the height or orientation is wrong, the radar’s calculated detection area can be displaced even though the device appears online. Plan to run the calibration control after the device is fixed in its final position.

Power the sensor and open its local interface

1. Connect power

Connect Shelly Presence Gen4 to its 5 V USB-C supply and wait for it to start. Keep it powered during setup and normal operation.

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2. Use the device access point when needed

If the sensor has not yet joined your normal Wi-Fi network, connect your phone or computer to the Shelly device’s access-point Wi-Fi network. While connected to that network, open 192.168.33.1 in a browser. Shelly documents this local interface as usable without Shelly Cloud, provided the browser remains on the same Wi-Fi network as the device.

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3. Configure network access

Use the local interface to give the sensor access to the network on which Home Assistant runs. Once it has joined that network, identify its hostname or IP address if you plan to add it manually. A DHCP reservation is useful for a permanent installation because it prevents the address from changing, although the Shelly integration can also work with the device hostname when it is resolvable.

Add Shelly Presence Gen4 to Home Assistant

Automatic discovery

  1. Open Home Assistant and go to Settings > Devices & services.
  2. Look for a discovered Shelly device in the integrations area.
  3. Select the discovered device and follow the on-screen setup flow.
  4. Open the resulting device page and confirm that entities for presence, tracking or zones are available.

Manual setup

  1. In Settings > Devices & services, select Add Integration.
  2. Search for and select Shelly.
  3. When Home Assistant asks for the device address, enter the sensor’s hostname or IP address.
  4. Complete the flow, then open the Shelly device entry to inspect its entities.

Discovery and manual setup use the same Shelly integration. Manual entry is useful when multicast discovery is blocked by a router, the sensor is on another network segment or you want to choose a stable address.

Confirm the connection

Open the device in Home Assistant and look at its status and entity list. A successful connection should give you changing readings when a person enters or leaves the monitored area. If the device is listed but values never change, finish the physical configuration and calibration steps before treating it as an integration problem.

Set the room, orientation and detection limits

Enter the mounting geometry

In the Shelly device interface, set the mounting height to the measured distance from the floor. Set the tilt to match the actual angle and enable the flipped-mounting option if the unit is installed upside down. The documented mounting-height input spans 0–5 m.

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Define the vertical detection window

Set minimum and maximum detection heights when you need to reject activity outside the useful part of the room. Shelly documents a minimum detection-height range of 0–2.9 m and a maximum detection-height range of 0.1–5 m. For example, a low minimum can include seated occupants, while a higher boundary can exclude activity close to the floor; choose values based on what your automation should consider a person.

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Adjust transmission power and sensitivity

Transmission power and sensitivity influence how much of the room is treated as active and how readily movement is detected. Start with the default values, test the actual room and change one control at a time. Increasing sensitivity can help with weak or distant detections but may also make reflections and neighboring activity more noticeable. Reducing it can limit unwanted triggers, at the cost of missed or delayed detections.

Run calibration after installation

With the sensor fixed in its final position, use the interface’s calibration control. Shelly exposes this operation as Presence.TiltCalibrate. Recalibrate after changing the mounting angle, rotating the unit or moving it to another wall.

Create meaningful detection zones

Start with areas tied to an action

Use the room-and-zones view in the Gen4 interface to create zones. A zone should correspond to a decision your automation makes: a desk where a monitor should stay awake, a sofa where reading lights should remain on, or a doorway used to detect entry. Shelly supports up to 10 customized zones, but creating fewer, well-defined zones is usually easier to test than filling all available slots.

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Create and remove zones

The Shelly Presence component provides operations for adding and deleting zones. In the device interface, add a zone, position its boundaries over the intended area and save the configuration. Delete a zone when the room layout changes rather than leaving overlapping areas that produce ambiguous triggers.

Check transitions against the physical room

Walk slowly through each zone, pause, sit and leave. Watch which zone state changes in Home Assistant. If a boundary triggers while you are still in the neighboring area, resize or reposition the zone and test again. Zone geometry is only useful when it matches the room’s actual furniture and the behavior you want to automate.

Understand the available tuning and status controls

Shelly’s Presence API exposes separate methods for configuration, status, zones and live operation. They are useful when an interface control is not convenient or when you are building an advanced local-management workflow.

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API method Purpose
Presence.SetConfig Write configuration values such as tracking count, limits, mounting data, transmission power and sensitivity-related settings.
Presence.GetConfig Read the current configuration.
Presence.GetStatus Read the current presence and tracking status.
Presence.AddZone Add a detection zone.
Presence.DeleteZone Remove a detection zone.
Presence.TiltCalibrate Calibrate tilt after mounting.
Presence.LiveTrack Expose live tracking information for setup or monitoring.
Presence.SetSensor Enable or disable tracking.

Set tracking count deliberately

The configuration field num_tracks accepts values from 1 to 10. This controls how many tracked objects the configuration allows. Shelly’s separate product claim is up to six simultaneously detected people; setting num_tracks to 10 does not mean the sensor can identify 10 people or assign names to six people.

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Build Home Assistant automations from the sensor

Use the exposed Shelly entities

After integration, open the device’s entities and choose the presence, occupancy, count, tracking or zone entities that match the action you want. Add the relevant entities to a dashboard so you can observe their state before creating an automation.

Use occupancy for room-level actions

For a whole-room light, fan or climate rule, use the sensor’s occupancy state as the condition or trigger. Add a short clearing delay when the controlled device should not switch off immediately after a person becomes still; mmWave sensors can continue detecting stationary occupants, but furniture, reflections and zone boundaries still deserve a real-room test.

Use zones for localized actions

For a desk lamp or monitor, choose the entity representing the desk zone rather than the room-wide entity. For a doorway workflow, use the zone that covers the threshold and verify the direction and timing by walking through it repeatedly.

Use Home Assistant Zone triggers where they fit

Home Assistant’s Zone integration provides occupancy-detected, occupancy-cleared, zone-entered and zone-left triggers. These triggers are useful when the entity exposed by the Shelly integration is represented as a Home Assistant zone or when you are combining the radar signal with other zone-aware entities. Select the trigger in the automation editor and confirm that the selected zone changes state during your walk test.

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Separate detection from identity

To turn “the room is occupied” into a named-person decision, combine the Shelly entity with a separate device tracker assigned to a Home Assistant Person. For example, a lighting automation can require room occupancy from Shelly and the presence of a particular person’s device tracker. The radar still supplies the room signal; the tracker supplies the identity signal.

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Verify the installation with a repeatable test

  1. Stand outside the monitored room and confirm that the room and relevant zones are clear.
  2. Enter the room and wait without moving for long enough to test stationary detection.
  3. Move between each configured zone and note the state-change timing in Home Assistant.
  4. Have two or more people occupy different parts of the room and check the tracking and count behavior.
  5. Leave one person seated while another exits, then confirm that the room does not clear prematurely.
  6. Repeat the test with the lights or other automated loads enabled and adjust delays only after the sensor states are reliable.

Record the final mounting height, tilt, detection limits, sensitivity and zone layout. That record makes later troubleshooting much faster than trying to reconstruct the original installation.

Troubleshoot common setup problems

Home Assistant does not discover the sensor

  • Confirm that the sensor is powered from the 5 V USB-C supply.
  • Check that the sensor and Home Assistant are on networks that can reach each other.
  • Use Add Integration > Shelly and enter the hostname or IP address manually.
  • If the address changes repeatedly, create a DHCP reservation and update the integration if necessary.

The local page will not open

  • Connect the browser to the sensor’s access-point Wi-Fi network, not your normal network, when using the initial setup address.
  • Enter 192.168.33.1 exactly in the browser address bar.
  • Make sure the browser remains connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the sensor’s access point.
  • After joining the normal network, use the assigned hostname or IP address instead of the access-point address.

Occupancy is missed or clears too quickly

  • Recheck mounting height, tilt and flipped-mounting status.
  • Run tilt calibration again after confirming the physical orientation.
  • Review the minimum and maximum detection-height limits.
  • Increase sensitivity cautiously and retest stationary occupants.
  • Ensure the zone is not drawn beside the person’s actual position.

False detections occur outside the intended area

  • Reduce the zone to the area needed by the automation.
  • Review transmission power and sensitivity one change at a time.
  • Raise or lower the detection-height limits to exclude unwanted activity.
  • Move the sensor away from reflective or obstructing surfaces and calibrate again.

Zone states do not match the room

  • Delete and redraw zones after major furniture or sensor-position changes.
  • Use the live tracking view to observe where detections appear.
  • Walk the zone boundaries slowly, then test seated and standing positions.
  • Keep overlapping zones to a minimum unless an automation explicitly needs overlap.

The automation says who is home incorrectly

This is a model problem rather than a calibration problem. Shelly presence indicates that the room is occupied; it does not identify the occupant. Add or verify a separate Home Assistant device_tracker and its assignment to a Person entity, then use that identity signal alongside the radar state.

Design choices for reliable multi-person automations

Prefer room occupancy for safety and comfort

Use the radar as the authoritative signal for whether a room needs light, ventilation or climate control. These actions generally do not require knowing which individual is present and benefit from detecting several occupants at once.

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Use zones to avoid whole-room side effects

Zone-based rules are better when one person’s activity should affect only one area. A desk zone can keep a task light on while a separate sofa zone controls a reading lamp, without making the entire room behave as one undifferentiated space.

Combine signals when identity matters

For personal scenes, notifications or access decisions, require a named Person or device tracker in addition to Shelly occupancy. Treat a missing tracker as “identity unknown,” not as proof that the room is empty.

Do not confuse API capacity with guaranteed performance

The API allows a tracking-count value from 1 to 10, while Shelly’s product documentation states up to six simultaneous people. Actual results depend on room geometry, installation, sensitivity, detection limits and interference. Validate the exact behavior you need in the installed room before making a critical automation depend on a particular count.

When to recalibrate or reconfigure

  • After moving the sensor, changing its tilt or rotating it 180 degrees.
  • After changing the mounting height or the room furniture in front of the radar.
  • When a zone begins triggering outside its intended area.
  • When a stationary person is repeatedly lost from tracking.
  • When an automation remains active after the room is clearly empty.

Make one change at a time, run the same walk-and-pause test and keep the setting that best matches the intended automation rather than maximizing sensitivity or the number of zones.

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Bottom line

Set up Shelly Presence Gen4 locally, add it through Home Assistant’s Shelly integration, calibrate the real mounting geometry and draw zones around actual automation areas. Its strength is multi-person room and zone occupancy—up to six people and 10 zones according to Shelly’s published figures—not named-person recognition. Add separate Home Assistant device trackers when an automation must distinguish one person from another.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

Home AssistantmmWave presence sensoroccupancy automationShelly Presence Gen4smart home

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