Page 1 of 1

Automobile presence sensing

PostPosted: Tue Mar 08, 2016 4:24 pm
by jalves
I'm looking for a (mostly) hardware solution to determining when each of my two cars is in the garage. It would seem that a beacon-type system would be a perfect solution to this but I am not at all up to date on the state of the art on this. In fact, its somewhat amazing that I even know what a beacon is. :)

Anyway, I was thinking broadly about a (low power) device permanently wired into each car that would emit a signal that would then be detected by something in my home. That would then be used to trigger a variable in Indigo that is true if the car is in the garage and false if it isn't. Once I have that, I can then move on to various actions (I'm comfortable enough with Indigo to do this part) that occurs when a car enters or leaves the garage.

Any suggestions for the hardware?

Re: Automobile presence sensing

PostPosted: Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:25 pm
by kw123
Pibeacon does exactly that
Get a radius beacon or any other described in the pibeacon thread.

But then you must setup a raspberry pi. I tried to make it very simple. No program ramming is required but you need to be able to create a ssd and put into to the rpi, use a terminal and follow the script.

The read me first discusses that in detail.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Automobile presence sensing

PostPosted: Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:26 pm
by roussell
I've been meaning to try using an Insteon wireless door and window sensor. Always triggered and powered by the vehicle's "key on" circuit. I did that same years ago with X10 and it worked well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Automobile presence sensing

PostPosted: Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:04 am
by jalves
Thanks for the suggestions. Food for thought!