Indigo Domotics

First world problem here: my driveway is over 200 meters long. It's windy, both left right and up down. I have no power at the street. I have no wifi coverage beyond about 20 yards from the house in the driveway direction. There are trees that completely block line of sight.

Does anyone know of a sensor that I could use to detect vehicles without setting up some sort of ridiculous mains-powered 10 unit Z-wave relay all along the driveway? It's worth it to me to have to add some sort of serial interface to read a non-Indigo compatible signal, but not worth it to run 200+meters of in ground AC power.
EDIT:

Found some RF driveway sensors with the kind of range I need. I'd be willing to hack together something from the chime circuit of one of these.

Has anyone done this? Is there another model you prefer?

Edit again: This one has a relay for "wiring external alarms"

I'm interested in this as well - I have a long driveway (not as long as yours). And I have considered running a 12V DC cable down to the driveway entrance (the cheap kind for pathway lights). Then convert the 12V to 5V and power a tiny long range packet radio like this one (Adafruit Feather 32u4 LoRa Radio (RFM9x)) to send alerts back to my house.

You would need a second receiver back at the house and a small relay to close (to signal indigo). I'm not sure if you could run this setup with a small solar charger and Lipoly battery. The TX/RX can handle the battery but I'm not clear on its over charging protection if hooked up to a small solar panel (like the Ring Solar Panel). I'm also assuming you could use the same sensor arrangement as a garage door to detect cars or people entering the driveway.

This would take some work, too much for me right now but if an out of the box solution does not exist (I'm hoping someone posts one) - I might mess with this at some point. Link to tiny radio here

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-fea ... e/overview

Anyway, thanks for posting this question - I'm sure others are in the same boat!

If you have cellular coverage, you may like to consider an SMS controller like this:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/182329153370 ... EBIDX%3AIT

I recently used this to control a remote farm gate, using battery supply with solar charging (with a suitable charge controller!).

Control is effected by dialing the device, but it doesn't answer, so no call cost. It can be programmed to confirm action via SMS, and some devices have digital inputs that can SMS to nominated numbers.
It was interfaced to Indigo using the Twilio plugin. Delay due to SMS messaging may be an issue for vehicle detection though?


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Have used a number of sensors from Dakota Alert https://www.dakotaalert.com/catb2b1/index.php?cPath=51

There 2500 series has a 4 zone receiver with 4 separate relay outputs and sounders. You can mix the transmitter types.
They claim a 1/2 mile range. The longest setup I have done is about 500 feet with no problems.

The passive infrared detector and buried probe (detects moving metal cars) run for a year or more with batteries. The infrared
beam break detector is a 2 piece unit that uses solar cells and rechargeable batteries for power. The beam break detector I have had
trouble with them leaking water into the unit and had to replace them with the passive inferred detectors. (all under warranty )

Have had no problems with the passive inferred but it does detect large animals. The buried probe also works well but only detects
cars and trucks.

Elwood

Awesome find, thanks Elwood! Do you have it feeding into Indigo via the relays? What do you have connected to the relay if so?

Have not used the Dakota on my own system. Used for customers with very long driveway who just need to get a beep when
someone drives in. The insteon EZIO 4 has 4 inputs that should work fine.

My own setup I don't need the wireless long range but want to cover large area without false activations. For that I use the Optex VX-402R wireless
passive inferred detectors covers about 40ftx40ft. https://www.amazon.com/Optex-Morse-VX-4 ... B00CLWYWMM
This detector has a duel PIR detectors one parallel to the ground and the second aimed towards the ground, mounting hight is about 4 feet. Both have
to activate at the same time so anything under 4 foot high are not detected. It does get the deer though. When it does activate there is a 99% chance a car
or person has entered the property, not just a raccoon or cat.
It works with most alarm system wireless transmitters. I have a Honeywell Vista 128 and the ad2usb plugin works great. Have three of them setup one for
the front lawn and driveway, one front door, and one in the back yard. Indigo makes announcements that there is someone coming up the driveway or someone
is at the front door. At night it turns on lights. Also charts daily outside activity.

If you don't have an alarm it should work with the insteon 2843-292 door contact. You will have to solder wire connections onto the 2843.

Elwood

I also use the Dakota 2500 magnetic sensor at 150 yds, and it works perfectly; They also have a passive IR sensor that can be linked to the same 4 channel receiver, but due to a large and fairly active deer population that use my drive as a highway, I prefer the magnetic sensor. I have been using an EZIO 1 input to get the info into Indigo since I currently have only one sensor, but plan to switch over to the rPi that I recently added near the front door for presence detection and automatic unlocking of the front door via Karl's PiBeacon plugin. This will also enable me to add a second transmitter about 10 yards from the first and report whether someone is coming or going when the two items trip.

Elwood, I also have an ademco 128. Hoe did you integrate the Dakota sensors into the unit? Could you reference a page in the programming manual?

I have a similar situation. Entrance to my driveway is about 200' away.

Ended up using this driveway alarm system: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008GVZKK0/ref=sr_ph_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494789369&sr=sr-1&keywords=rodann+driveway

The company claims up to a 1,000' range, no doubt line of sight.

The 12 volt alarm output of the receiver drives a small external relay whose closed contacts drives an Aeon z-wave dry contact sensor, which then triggers Indigo: https://www.amazon.com/Aeotec-Aeon-Labs-ZW097-Contact/dp/B0155HSUUY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494789458&sr=8-1&keywords=aeon+dry+contact+sensor


Works well, no complaints other than an occasional deer can trip it.

hamw wrote:

Elwood, I also have an ademco 128. Hoe did you integrate the Dakota sensors into the unit? Could you reference a page in the programming manual?

Hamw
If you are using berkinet's AD2USB Plugin with the vist128 it simple. You don't need to do any programing on the alarm panel. You need a Honeywell wireless contact, the 5816 is a 2 zone and the 5817XT is a 3 zone. Connect the relay output on the Dakota to the contact input on the wireless contact. In Indigo make a new device Type--AD2USB Model--Alarm Zone Under config enter the units serial number in TAG space and give it a zone number, zone type wireless, set loop number the loop number the relay is connected to.

Now the device will show as clear or faulted when the Dakota changes.

Hope this helps

Elwood

Picking up the reference to LorRaWAN earlier in this thread, there are an increasing number of inexpensive LoRaWAN enabled sensors and gateways appearing on. stores like https://www.iot-store.com.au . My use case is remotely monitoring a water tank and solar pump , rather than the driveway, however it all comes back to long range monitoring of a dry contact.

Devices with a 5 year battery life and very long range connectivity are now now in the pricing ballpark of zwave.