Having already wired my garage door for Vera control, and more recently worked on having it automatically open when my wife or I come home, I thought it would be fun to have it automatically open when remote starting a vehicle in the garage.
I used a Schlage sensor and a 12v relay from RadioShack along with their second smallest project box. In order to fit everything in the box, the cover to the relay was discarded and the relay’s sides shaved down; the casing for the Schlage sensor was altered almost beyond recognition (chopped ends, shaved side, only a small part of the cover remains to close the tamper switch.
Anyway, it works great and I just wanted to share the idea in case some other automation fanatics would be interested.
I will add that the project was not a speedy success. There was much cursing and irritation after testing a 12v while running wire in our 2014 Explorer LTD, and verifying it twice, only to find that somehow it only puts out 0.64v AND completely severing the wire! For 12v to the relay, I ended up soldering a small wire directly to the downstream side of a low profile blade fuse that Ford had labeled as not used.
Let me know what you come up with as far as automatically opening the door when you arrive home. I want to do this and I haven’t been able to come up with the proper control strategy for this.
Initially I was using the iPhoneLocator plugin, which had great consistency is when it triggered our arrival, but was a bit of a drain on battery life because we don’t drive very far to work.
I’ve enrolled in the beta for iViri, which is great on battery life, but really varies on arrival detection. Sometimes I sit in the driveway for minutes before it opens (obviously I could manually open the door, but this is for testing purposes).
So now I plan on trying (again) a combo of the two plugins, using iViri to trigger rapid polling in iPhoneLocator for accurate arrival prediction.
I plan on doing this with my iPhone locator and a driveway sensor. I haven’t gotten the sensor installed yet, but when I do I plan on polling the iPhone locator to see where I am every time the sensor is tripped, and proceeding from there. That way, polling would be kept to a bare minimum. I’m guessing it would be muted the vast majority of the time. Right now I have custom polling set up and it doesn’t wreak havoc on battery life. Took some PLEG and a bunch of trips back and forth to work to get all the wrinkles ironed out, but I find it is working great now.
The problem I had with just using iPhone Locator was that it would randomly see one of our phones as away (sometimes a 1/4 mile, sometimes more) for a few seconds or even minutes. Needless to say, my wife was not impressed with the garage opening at 3am, let alone all the other random times.
Just to be clear, it is not the plugin’s fault. It’s either my crappy T-Mobile service, phantom Apple service poll remnants or both.
yes you need a accurate trigger-device anything “mobile” is not accurate enough (i work in the location based business for a long time to know that)
either have proper tracking in the car and trigger via a Geo-fence, or a stationary sensor which detects the car … (but this detects ANY car) …
with the combination of somethings installed in the car permanently (like RFID tags, GPS based fencing, …) you have also gain a security aspect
my “car comes home” scene also unlocks the doors and (based on working shifts and the current time) ajust cooling/heating … lamps in the house and so on …
but to do this the trigger needs to be personalised to a single item/car/person.
if you have somethings agains a tracking solution, i would recoment long-range RFID tags where the scanner is placed somewhere narrow, to avoid fiddeling arround to be detected.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll continue to look into RFID and beacon tech until something affordable comes up.
In the meantime, my solution of using iViri and the iPhone plugin actually works perfectly. The garage door is either just starting to open or just finishing opening when it comes into view as we are approaching.
I only ditched the iPhone plugin to give the dev of iViri a chance to back up his claims. The iPhone plugin is only polling one or both of our phones for a couple minutes tops, so battery life is a non-issue.
Wouldn’t this be kind of dangerous if for some reason the Zwave auto open failed? You would end up running that car in a closed garage.[/quote]
I feel more than confident that there are no risks of injury or death posed by my setup.
[ul][li]The car only runs for 5 minutes.[/li]
[li]We only start it a few seconds before heading out to the car or loading our toddler into the car seat.[/li]
[li]We get alerts on our phones for open close status (The garage door is the only device I use alerts for).[/li]
[li]The furnace uses outside air to replenish itself.[/li]
[li]You can hear the garage door.[/li][/ul]
[quote=“awake33, post:6, topic:180862”]The problem I had with just using iPhone Locator was that it would randomly see one of our phones as away (sometimes a 1/4 mile, sometimes more) for a few seconds or even minutes. Needless to say, my wife was not impressed with the garage opening at 3am, let alone all the other random times.
Just to be clear, it is not the plugin’s fault. It’s either my crappy T-Mobile service, phantom Apple service poll remnants or both.[/quote]
Yup this is going to be a problem with any Phone GPS system and I have used 3 so far. They are good for large area coverage but not for close perimeter. I also ran into alot of problems with phone internet switch from wifi to cell and vise versa. That just causes more lag and hiccups.
All of this has caused me to start playing with the 4 routers I have around my house.
With one Brodcom router is works great. Atheros routers it connects fast but the router wants to hold me for 5 min after I have dissconnected from wifi, So I’m using a combination for now. This only requires my phone to connect to wifi and doesn’t cause any battery drain or running of any apps. If I don’t have internet on my phone (between cell and wifi) the router does and still fires off the vera command to flip the virtual multiswitch.
So far been happy with he setup but does have the delay disconnect on certin routers, and I’m not start enough to fix it. I have 4 routers (3as AP) around my house to give me full wifi coverage (had this before VERA). My AP with Atherios chips were 19.99 routers I got from Amazon and run DDWRT on them. Non gigabit and with my cameras around I’m thinking of changing them out anyways to something better and with Brodcom chips to hopefully fix the only bug I have found.
I’m currently running a multiswitch 4 switches for my phone on each of the 4 routers and 4 for my wife’s. Then with PLEG watching those 4 and triggering a master to see if I’m currently connected to any of the 4 to set me home or non of them to set me away.
My front AP can get me connected from few hundred feet away when I pull up. As soon as my android phone says connected to wifi my virtual switch triggers instantly.
I think beacon and RFID is good for close range proximity but I’m not seeing how that would show if you car is running vs. just parked there. Sounds like you need something to change with the state of the ignition.
Based on the router Idea I been playing with any old wifi device that’s hardwired to the 12v system in your car (or plugged into a cigarette lighter that’s switched) could set a virtual switch that car is on.
The device would have to be a quick start-up device. But when it got 12v and powered on it connects to the home wifi netwrok which triggers the virtual switch. (car is close by and running)
I actually tried a TP-Link nano router setup in client mode to start the car. It worked, but it took approximately 42 seconds to open the door. It was also going to be a pain to find 12v while running and then convert it to 5v to power it. So I went with the door/window sensor. I’m glad I did because it is instantaneous and the battery will last more than three years; and I can easily move it to another vehicle.
Since it is a brand new car with a sophisticated electrical system, I wanted to keep it simple as far as powering the trigger device. I was told the BCM on this car costs $3k if you fry it.
[quote=“awake33, post:13, topic:180862”]I actually tried a TP-Link nano router setup in client mode to start the car. It worked, but it took approximately 42 seconds to open the door. It was also going to be a pain to find 12v while running and then convert it to 5v to power it. So I went with the door/window sensor. I’m glad I did because it is instantaneous and the battery will last more than three years; and I can easily move it to another vehicle.
Since it is a brand new car with a sophisticated electrical system, I wanted to keep it simple as far as powering the trigger device. I was told the BCM on this car costs $3k if you fry it.[/quote]
OK, I’m lost if you didn’t want to wire anything to the car? How does the door and window sensor know the cars actually running or not? Does that cause any problems with the sensor being out of range for a day or few days on a trip?
EDIT: I see now you said powering, So I’m assuming the 12volts was the only issue.
[quote=“integlikewhoa, post:14, topic:180862”][quote=“awake33, post:13, topic:180862”]I actually tried a TP-Link nano router setup in client mode to start the car. It worked, but it took approximately 42 seconds to open the door. It was also going to be a pain to find 12v while running and then convert it to 5v to power it. So I went with the door/window sensor. I’m glad I did because it is instantaneous and the battery will last more than three years; and I can easily move it to another vehicle.
Since it is a brand new car with a sophisticated electrical system, I wanted to keep it simple as far as powering the trigger device. I was told the BCM on this car costs $3k if you fry it.[/quote]
OK, I’m lost if you didn’t want to wire anything to the car? How does the door and window sensor know the cars actually running or not? Does that cause any problems with the sensor being out of range for a day or few days on a trip?
EDIT: I see now you said powering, So I’m assuming the 12volts was the only issue.[/quote]
Correct, providing 5v to the sensor was the issue.
As far as problems with the sensor being out of range for extended periods: I set Vera to never poll the device.
I use Geofencing (Vera Proximity on Android that I wrote) others have used iViri (on IOS).
The problem is that a Geofence application can give false indications. i.e. if they GPS does not work inside … it will be based on Cell towers or wifi … and during connection transitions it gives false locations, depending on the fence radius, this can be a problem.
The only thing I unconditionally do with a fence transition in my automation is to turn on outside lights at night on arrival.
I rely on the Garage Door Opening and geofence transtistions from an unlocked phone (Kind of a two factor authentication) to do real work.
IN PLEG:
Departed GarageOpen; HousePerimeterExit < 5:00; Arrived HousePerimeterEnter; GarageOpen < 5:00 GONE Departed and OuterPerimeterExit and (Departed; OuterPerimeterExit) AND (OuterPerimeterExit; NOW > 2:00) Returning OuterPerimeterEntry and (GONE; OuterPerimeterEntry) AND (OuterPerimeterEntry; NOW > 2:00);
On Departed, I close the garage door, if I left it open, turn off all lights, and Arm the alarm system.
On Arrived, I disarm the alarm system, unlock the inner doors, and lights as needed from garage to living area.
On GONE I set the HVAC to away … the perimeter is outside the distance for my typical errands.
On Returning I set the HVAC to home mode.
No false glitch in the Geofencing will cause any bad behavior in my Automation. But it relies on a reliable Garage Open signal.
As long as the protocol to recognize the nano in the car, when powered, and range is robust. This would work for me.
The absence of a signal is meaningless (Car off, Car gone).
Do you plan on using an external antennae to increase range to open the door on arrival ?
@Richard
No, the ping sensor in conjunction with the nano router is not reliable enough for me.
My current use of iViri and iPhoneLocator works perfectly and does not drain our phone batteries. I can’t stress it enough, I really like the garage door to open as we’re arriving. Not 45 seconds before or worse, ~2 minutes after.
My iViri geofence is over 1/2 mile away and un-mutes the iPhoneLocator plugin when we enter the zone. Because I’m using an ‘OR’ statement in PLEG, I have to do a little logic juggling in PLEG to accommodate the fact that we are using two iCloud accounts and do not want a double trigger (which would stop the garage door halfway through opening).
What do you think the cause of this was? Ping sensor?
That's great that it works for you. I know myself and most others find its inconstant for close range which has always been why we are looking for something other then geofence for this type of control.
Between phone getting location update, running the app sending the command, phone switching to wifi as I arrive. I never get consistency, unless I activate 1/2 mile away, which is not good for me. Even all this depends on cell towers and data connection in your area, or even phone capabilities. And any app thats running on your phone causes some type of drain.
Also another down side is your currently talking about only Iphones. What about people that don't have Iphones. Now you need a totally different software. Nano router or the like doesn't care what phone you use.
Hope you can pass on some more info that could help us on your test with nano router.
How did you end up powering it during your arrival and departure tests?
What do you think the cause of this was? Ping sensor?
That's great that it works for you. I know myself and most others find its inconstant for close range which has always been why we are looking for something other then geofence for this type of control.
Between phone getting location update, running the app sending the command, phone switching to wifi as I arrive. I never get consistency, unless I activate 1/2 mile away, which is not good for me. Even all this depends on cell towers and data connection in your area, or even phone capabilities. And any app thats running on your phone causes some type of drain.
Also another down side is your currently talking about only Iphones. What about people that don't have Iphones. Now you need a totally different software. Nano router or the like doesn't care what phone you use.
Hope you can pass on some more info that could help us on your test with nano router.
How did you end up powering it during your arrival and departure tests?[/quote]
Initially I powered the nano from the USB port in the car; for testing purposes only I wasn’t worried about future steps until I could determine how long it would take to boot up and trigger the scene in Vera.
This was solely for the purpose of opening the garage door when the car is started, not for detecting arrival.
And I agree about 1/2 mile being too far. The iViri dev kept suggesting that I increase the distance in order to avoid delays. I feel that misses the point and also somewhat defeats the purpose of the app, for my usage scenario anyway.
The weak point in the nano setup was the ping sensor plugin. It gives false negatives/positives at times.
Overall, where Z-wave is concerned. I actually looking into some alternatives to Vera at this point. It just doesn’t have the reliability I desire. It is great for its price point. But I’m willing to spend more for dependability.
Thanks, I have never used a NANO before and did see now that it uses USB power. And Ebay has the TL-WR703N which can run DDWRT for 21.00 free shipping. Looks like I’ll get one just to play around with.