Automobile presence sensing

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Questions about hardware that can be controlled by Indigo (but not through the interfaces and plugins listed). If Indigo doesn't support some bit of hardware you're interested in, and you don't find a 3rd Party Plugin for it, add it to this forum. Be sure to include links to as much information as you can find about it.

Note: adding it here does not mean we're going to add it - in fact it's possible one of our 3rd party developers may decide to write a plugin for it. We add hardware/features based on a lot of different factors beyond just having a request for it.

Posted on
Tue Mar 08, 2016 4:24 pm
jalves offline
Posts: 744
Joined: Jun 16, 2013

Automobile presence sensing

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?

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Tue Mar 08, 2016 7:25 pm
kw123 offline
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Posts: 8333
Joined: May 12, 2013
Location: Dallas, TX

Re: Automobile presence sensing

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.


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Posted on
Tue Mar 08, 2016 8:26 pm
roussell offline
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Posts: 1108
Joined: Aug 18, 2008
Location: Alabama

Re: Automobile presence sensing

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.


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Posted on
Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:04 am
jalves offline
Posts: 744
Joined: Jun 16, 2013

Re: Automobile presence sensing

Thanks for the suggestions. Food for thought!

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

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