I am disabled and have a chair lift so I can move between floors. Our house is small, so the lift has a feature that moves the chair part way up the track and then folds up a portion of the track so it is not an obsticle to others walking past the bottom of the staircase. This function is controlled by an RF remote where I hold an “up” button until the chair gets to the proper position on the track, then press and hold the button again to fold the track. The process is reversed by pressing and holding a “down” button.
Is it possible to control this function through z-wave or Insteon? It would save me from carrying another remote on my wheelchair. I am new to home automation, I have a VeraLite and several lighting control and motion sensors now, but nothing too complicated. Any help would be appreciated.
If you had a spare RF Remote for the device, you could potentially crack it open and solder wires to the “Up” and “Down” elements of the control, and then attach it to something like:
… since the problem you describe is fairly similar to the control of automated blinds/shutters. The plugin above controls the Relay board for Up/Down actions and exposes them using a standard interface for Automation and Control within Vera. Some adaptation may be required to ensure that the press-and-hold events go for long enough to trigger the events on the chair-device.
I think @shady mentioned recently that the single Somfy Blinds controller uses this technique (but puts it all into a fancy plastic box)
Alternatively, you’d have to find a device that can talk the specific RF frequencies, and protocol, that’s used by your chair system. That might be a harder road to travel.
Disclaimer: Not for life-critical activities (etc) and, since it’s software, there’s always risk of malfunction… so use with appropriate care.
Thank you both for the replies. The “hardwired” switch is built into the arm of the chair. I will call the manufacturer and try to find the frequencies, etc. and to get another remote to play with. I have looked at some of the posts on the blinds/shutters pages, I am just not familiar enough with all of the terminology yet. Any additional suggestions would be appreciated.
@FTZGuy,
Automated Roller Blinds have very similar ways to get them to roll up and down. You can see pictures of the “hack” I’m referring to above, but instead applied to a Somfy Blinds remote control, in posts like this one:
where the remote has been stripped down, had wires soldered to it, and put into a plastic box. If the right electrical connections are made on the wires, it’s the same as pressing the buttons. The “remote” itself still needs it’s batteries (etc), but now something else can be attached to these wires to “join” them together at the right points in time.
This is where the Relay contact comes in. There are 4 relays on the cited board, and you’ll need 2x of them, so the other two will just go unused. This relay board will also need to be connected to Vera via a USB-Serial cable.
The Plugin for the relay board will control the activation of the relays, based upon Up/Down buttons that the Plugin exposes in Vera.
Two relays are used, one to control whether the “Up” or “Down” button is being pressed, the other to actually “press” You can see a picture of this [roughly] here:
With this style of control, all of these “pieces” can be near/next to Vera, as long as the RF Remote control would also work from that location (ie. assuming it’s close enough to the stair lift device)… this part you could test now.
Yes, I can get the remote close to the Vera. I will order the parts and get started trying. I will be asking questions once the parts arrive. Thank you.
Good morning,
I found out from the manufacturer that the unit operates at 2.4 GHz (XBee product) and uses proprietary Bruno encryption. Does that help, hurt, or make no difference?
If you’re able to use the solder technique to add wires specifically to the PCB of the remote, it really doesn’t matter what RF protocol the device uses.
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You can see a picture of this [roughly] here: