Driveway Sensor DIY Z-wave

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
61

You’ve attained Nirvana in driveaway alerts. Now the only thing left would be to have one of your cameras scan Kelly Blue Book to give you the current retail price of every car that comes in your driveway :smiley:

Could you detail a little more on your set up? What cameras are you using and how did you integrate that? How did you integrate your Sonos zones as well?

Any info would be appreciated.

Thank you.

62

Or a lookup of the license plate, sending details on who the driver is :slight_smile:

I’m using a cheap Foscam outdoor IP camera. I’m using the “Foscam IP Cam” Plugin on the Vera side, and the TinyCam Pro app on my Android phone (a great app that has a Tasker integration - in short, a Tasker scene is triggered whenever a specific Vera Alert message arrives on the phone. That scene then fires a task that streams video from that Foscam camera to my Moto 360 watch via the TinyCam Pro app).

For Sonos, I’m using the “Sonos Controller” plugin in Vera.

So basically the scene that is triggered whenever a car is detected in the driveway does:

  1. Send a Vera Alert message (including a 5 second video) to my Android phone, which in turn then fires a tasker task to do the Android Wear streaming to my watch
  2. Fires a Sonos “Say” action to all Sonos Zones with the announcement

Hope that was more or less understandable :slight_smile:

63

Perfect, thank you. I had a spendy camera system that I purchased from Costco. It was an ok system, but quite a hassle to work with. Ended up taking system back. I’ll probably pick up a foscam camera to see if I can duplicate your set up, but with IOS.

Thanks again,

David

64

So I have a Dakota Driveway Alert set up. It has been running for months quite well. I am now trying to integrate it with my Vera by using a ZWave window/door sensor. I connected wires to the window/door sensor and when I touch them together, Vera sees this and fires my scene tied to it. The trouble comes in when I try to connect the wires from the sensor to the Dakota. It has a NO (Normally Open), NC (Normally Closed), and COM relay. Should I be connecting the wires to the NO & COM or the NC & COM?

Sorry for the stupid question, I’ve tried to find the answer here, but I’ve come up empty. I tried each and when I break the driveway sensor, the Dakota chime sounds, but the scene does not run.

65

Both no and com and nc and com should work. The difference is what the icon on the Vera interface looks like. I have mine connected to nc and com. This gives me the green running guy on Vera unless the sensor is tripped, then I get the red guy.

I hope this helps.

David

66

Thanks…it does help. Unsure why Dakota is not triggering it. So when your Dakota triggers, does it still chime, even though you are using relays?

67

Yes, the receiver dings and it triggers the scene as well. Double check the wires on both ends. I’ve had problems with the wires coming loose. The attachment points are very small. What Zwave sensor are you using? The sensor I have also has a little pressure switch on the bottom. If it is not mounted on wall, the pressure switch needs to be taped down.

68

Thanks. I am using an old telephone cord wire. I will go get some more stable wire just in case. I think it’s okay since it does trigger my scene when I touch the wires together (when the other ends are attached to the window sensor, which is a schlage sensor and works fine with the magnet). But when I put the open ends into the relays in the Dakota, they just seem to do nothing when the beams are broken (and I know they are broken since I can hear the chime).

I also adjusted the jumper from 1 sec to 10 secs just in case. The last thing I will try is the relays for 2, 3 and 4 (even though I am pretty sure the beam unit is set to 1). The biggest pain is that I have to trek out to the end of the driveway to see if it works since I don’t want to take down the beam units as it took a bit to get them perfectly mounted and aligned.