I’ve looked around for this sort of thing, and while there are magnetic window/door sensors that support dry contacts, I’m not seeing anything that simply reports contact status, without all of the other thrown in.
My target use: I would like to be able to verify closed status of three Liftmaster-driven garage doors. Liftmaster makes “sensors” for these, and an indoor RF monitor to watch them. Reading up on the sensors leads me to believe they are simple unidirectional inclinometers. You mount them near the top of the door surface. If the door is even slightly open, it begins to tilt as it follows the overhead track. The Liftmaster units are battery-powered. I’m already planning on putting a Vizia RF+ switch in the garage to control the overhead fluorescents, so there shouldn’t be a problem getting signal to and from the doors.
It seems like a simple contact sensor and a mercury or ball contact switch would be all this would take. But it looks like nothing like this exists?
Unfortunately Vera doesn’t support it properly. The transmitter is only represented as a single Motion sensor. But for your task it might be suitable nevertheless. It’s pricey though…
If vera would support it properly you could have even 2 contacts connected to it. The transmitter has 4 inputs but they are logically grouped in pairs.
Hope this help
[quote=“woodsby, post:3, topic:165464”]rlmalisz -
Why can’t you use magnetic sensors? Not following?
SK[/quote]
Oh, I could. It’s just that it really seems to me if someone made a beast like I’m describing, it could easily be the same size and form-factor as a simple motion-detector, and if anything, cheaper. I’ve had Ademco magnet-and-sensor alarm system stuff before, and keeping the clearances right and such was always an ongoing struggle for the garage doors.
I will probably wind up with such for this. The engineer in me just sees a lot of what’s required for magnet and sensor as being overkill for wanting to know if the top panel of the overhead door is vertical or not.
I was about to reply to this thread and report my HRDS1 with the magnetic contact as working great with my garage door for the past couple of months…
Then I noticed that the magnet clipped the track (there was only about 1mm clearance) and broke it off. Awesome… !
Looks like I will be shopping around for a magnetic contact for the bottom of the door and just connecting it to the closed contact terminals on the HRDS1 (very nice feature btw)
Does anyone have any experience with the following contact, I believe it will work…