Did the scene suggested earlier in the thread (regarding false triggers due to movement/shifting) work well, or did you still have problems until you built that circuit?
I didn’t even bother trying that scene. The amount of Z-Wave traffic would have been nuts every night and it would have eviscerated the batteries on the sensor. I just built the circuit. It’s really easy to make, cheap and the parts are all readily available at any RadioShack. I think it cost about $15 including the battery and many of the parts came in packages of 5 or so allowing one to make multiple circuits. If you or anyone else is interested just let me know and I’ll post a breakdown of how the circuit is made. It’s honestly real simple. I don’t know much about electronics, but I do know how to handle a soldering iron, and I was able to pull it off in about 20 minutes. Now that I’ve done it I could probably toss it together in 5 minutes or less.
Reporting back:
I’ve built the circuit. The delay is significantly longer than 8 seconds (22uF cap)… I guess it’s acceptable. Long enough for me to take a midnight leak, anyway.
I put the pressure mat under my mattress (standard mattress, king size, on a slat-style platform bed), and used a mono headphone jack and socket so I can disconnect the Everspring/delay circuit assembly from the mat (for ease of maintenance).
Works like a champ. I go to bed, the heat kicks down, and the porch light turns off. Wake up, heat comes back up.
This, combined with my RFID system, may well save me a fair amount of dough on heating oil this winter.
That’s actually quite a good idea. I’m worried about the integrity of the leads from the mat itself. They are pretty light gauge. I imagine it would pose more of an issue with a conventional bed which has more flex. Time will tell. I would like to fashion some mechanism that would allow the speaker wire I used to disconnect from the mat easily if there were undue stress.
I’m also toying with the idea of an In/Out of Bed virtual device. Not really sure on how to go about that though.
How are you implementing the RFID?
I’m glad you got it working. It’s really a great sensor. Now of only the Everspring sensors would drop in price by about $40. Are there any more cost effective sensors that could be used? All of the HomeSeer people use X10 Ds10a’s which apparently can be had for pennies on the dollar… and don’t work with Vera.
EDIT…
Wait, you said the delay is long enough for you to get up and hit the can? My delay is not much more than 10 seconds and I’m using a 100uf cap. See here:
Yeah. And what’s really odd is that when I was testing it on the bench, I was getting less than 5 seconds. I had a meter hooked to the collector and emitter wires, set to beep with continuity. When I shorted the headphone jack (“closed the switch”), the meter would beep for 3-4 seconds.
When I got home and tried it hooked to the Everspring, all of a sudden the delay is 1.5-2 minutes.
Not sure why it’s all wonky. Assembled it exactly as the schematic dictated.
As for the RFID, I have a key fob transmitter (I actually keep it in my wallet), and a receiver hooked to Vera. Combined with the bed sensor, I control my thermostat so that when I’m home and awake, the heat is at 67*. When I’m out, or asleep, the heat kicks down to 62*. I realize I could do this manually, but that’s too much like work.
You can read about the RFID system here: [url=http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,3855.0.html]http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,3855.0.html[/url]. I plan on using it for more… Just haven’t thought of anything fun yet.
Hmmmmmm. Maybe I’m having the same results and just don’t know it because I’m sleeping when it’s happening. My experience is like yours, on the bench. I haven’t tried watching the behavior in the dashboard since the sensor was put into the field. How can you judge the delay? Because the heat doesn’t fire up when you take a wizz? Or have you looked at the dashboard?
Dashboard.
I just brought my tablet into my room, stepped on the bed to trigger the sensor and watched the results in the dashboard. I am now seeing a delay on the order of 45 seconds. When I initially set this up I was on UI4. On UI5 now. I wonder if the lag is the result of some dashboard issue?
UPDATE:
So my bed sensor started to get too sensitive. For the past two weeks it wasn’t working very well. It would register me as out of bed every time I moved in my sleep. I have Vera Alerts send an alert every time I’m in or out of bed. It was actually pretty interesting to see when during the previous night I had slept soundly and when I was restless. As WakeUpRamp started lighting up my room I would inevitably stir a little and that would cancel my whole wake up routine. I replaced the mat and now everything is golden again.
@ExHempKnight, and anyone else who may have tried this, how’s it working out for you?
Just wondering if anyone could give me a tip on how to accomplish this? I’m getting tired of changing AAA batteries.
So is the ‘Sofa Scram Sonic Dog & Cat Deterrent Repellent Mat’ the easiest pressure sensitive mats to wire to a Z-Wave dry contact sensor?
Looking for this for the living room and bedroom to pause the motion activated lights without needing to select a scene manually.
John
Yeah. It’s probably the easiest. At least that I’ve found. I am looking for s more robust option though. I may end up having to make something myself. You’d think that there’d be a product on the market to fill this need but, alas, there seems to not be.
Thanks so much for all the information S-F 
I hope it works well for you. Please report how this works for you over time.
FYI, they make bed and chair pressure sensors, perhaps one of these could be adapted?
S-F, can you use this sensor below your mattress and above your box spring?
I guess I need something that can be hidden, which I assume means adjustable sensitivity.
Another potential option is switch that can sit under one of the bed frames six contact points, that may have a sensitivity adjustment.
I’m also using the sofa pet scram mat (or whatever its called). Instead of hooking up to z-wave device, I connected to a LightwaveRF door contact device costing ?11.50 ($15?). This tiny device runs off a CR2032 battery, has built in selectable delay timer, and transmits on 433MHz frequency picked up by RFXcom.
Not sure what 433HMz devices are available in your region, but they are generally lower cost than z-wave. Being a dumb transmit only device must be easier on the batteries too, as I’ve not had to change it yet after 9 months of use. I have the timer set fairly low, so it does create some unwanted chatter (that I see logged via Prowl), but I could probably use PLEG to filter it out with a kind of debounce timer (example debounce PLEG posted by someone recently).
Found an out of the box solution for this: http://www.shop.nonnatech.com/Bed-Sensor-Bed-Sensor.htm. Unfortunately, the guy who runs this company won’t sell it without the purchase of a Vera (which he charges a service fee for). I’m sure this guy isn’t the manufacturer. So, now I just need to track down another place to buy it from…
I ordered 3 sensors from NonaTech and order went through OK.
[ul][li]Chair Sensor[/li]
[li]Bed Sensor[/li]
[li]Nonna Button (like a staples button)[/li][/ul]
Will let you know it’s straight Z-Wave and if it connects to Vera.
Yeah, my order went through fine as well. However, after four days without any type of notifications he emailed me and said he was canceling the order and that “We currently do not sell the sensors individually without purchasing a Starter Set and a monthly plan.”. If for some reason your’s ships please do let me know, though.