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    Car at Home?

    I've been trying to come up with ideas on how to detect my car being home or not....but then I couldnt think of a single reason why I would want to know if it is here or not.

    What are people automating that needs to know the car is home over the person being home? I dont have a garage so opening the door for that is out....

    #2
    I want it so if the car comes in range of the house and is late at night I can have the porch light on/scene setup in the house without me having to press buttons on keypads.

    I was also thinking along the lines of if my car drives away, my power consumption is greater than x then it should send me a text message to say check the appliances as I seem to have left something on/or it should try and turn them off.

    And a rudimentary alarm system (as I don't set my alarm as a matter of course) if PIR's start getting triggered and the car is not home and i'm meant to be at work then chances are i'm being burgled.

    Just a couple of things I have thought of - however not that easy for me as it appears my car is out of range of my bluetooth dongle (car has a handsfree kit) and its a shared driveway so I can't start digging it up.

    Comment


      #3
      HS pages me when I have a phone call, a message, alarm goes on or off, reminders etc.
      If my truck is home it automatically stops pages. Plus I can tell if the wife is home so I know whether to call home or her cell. It is nice to have the HVAC and lights come on as you pull up. If a motion alarm goes off at home it's nice to know if the wife is home also.

      Cheaper RFID is a popular way - search the board.
      I've been using them for years.
      I don't know if he is in business anymore.
      Here is a place on eBay for the components to work with the CHeaper RFID plugin available on the HS Updater.


      ~Bill

      Comment


        #4
        Like others here I base a lot of events and how and when they run on what cars are at home and when they get there or leave. Everything from lighting scenes, to security to temperature settings.

        I'm using the cheaper RfID stuff coupled with the BLRFID plug-in.
        Marty
        ------
        XPpro SP3 /w HS Standard 2.5.0.80, HSTouch Server - 1.0.0.70, HSTouch Client 1.0.0.73 HSTouch Android - 1.0.0.2, HSTouch iPhone - 1.0.0.2
        Playing with HS3 a bit but it's just play at this point.

        Comment


          #5
          You just said burgled. That's funny :-)

          I was actually thinking about setting up some events that would act as a toggle between voice announcements over whole house audio, and sending txt to my phone, depending on if i'm home or away.

          problem there is we are a mutliple car family that doesn't always have assigned cars, so i need to monitor more than the car, but the person in it. I haven't convinced my wife to allow me to bug her purse yet. I'm thinking about trying the bluetooth plugin, because we never take each other's phones with us, though we may use each other's car.


          Originally posted by mrhappy View Post
          I want it so if the car comes in range of the house and is late at night I can have the porch light on/scene setup in the house without me having to press buttons on keypads.

          I was also thinking along the lines of if my car drives away, my power consumption is greater than x then it should send me a text message to say check the appliances as I seem to have left something on/or it should try and turn them off.

          And a rudimentary alarm system (as I don't set my alarm as a matter of course) if PIR's start getting triggered and the car is not home and i'm meant to be at work then chances are i'm being burgled.

          Just a couple of things I have thought of - however not that easy for me as it appears my car is out of range of my bluetooth dongle (car has a handsfree kit) and its a shared driveway so I can't start digging it up.
          Plugins:
          BLLogMonitor, BLGarbage, BLBackup, BLOutGoingCalls, BLUps, BLRfid, JvEss, DooMotion, Applied Digital Ocelot, AC RF Processor, UltraMon, PJC AVR 430, UPB, Rain8net, DSC Panel, JRiver Media center, Windows Media Player, SageMediaCenter, SnevlCID, MCSTemperature.

          Comment


            #6
            Thanks for the input!

            I'm like completelyhis, I might be in a company vehicle at times, or in my Jeep, or gone with the wife....the one thing that stays consistent though is that we always have our cell phones with us. I think I will just concentrate on detecting our cell phones. I have a working solution now using some of these:

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2

            It will detect any phone/bluetooth device whether it is in discover mode or hidden including my iphone. If there are any linux users that might be interested in a how-to just let me know (it will work with any linux using bluez tools but the modded firmware on a slug is just too cool).

            Comment


              #7
              I read some years ago on this board about someone who used an x10 motion detector for car presence. From what I recall, they placed the motion detector under the dash and set the ON to OFF delay for 10 minutes. If motion was seen to go ON, but not OFF, they assumed the car was no longer in the driveway. The idea was that the car would be far enough away in 10 minutes that the OFF signal was missing. A return car was indicated by seeing ON plus OFF within the 10 minutes. 10 minutes might be too long, but maybe 3-5 would work.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by MSK View Post
                I read some years ago on this board about someone who used an x10 motion detector for car presence. From what I recall, they placed the motion detector under the dash and set the ON to OFF delay for 10 minutes. If motion was seen to go ON, but not OFF, they assumed the car was no longer in the driveway. The idea was that the car would be far enough away in 10 minutes that the OFF signal was missing. A return car was indicated by seeing ON plus OFF within the 10 minutes. 10 minutes might be too long, but maybe 3-5 would work.
                Sir you are spot on.

                Over here we call it the foot well of the drivers seat.

                For this method do not use DooMotion or any other motion sensor programme.

                As stated it is simple. I use 4 mins for the off signal.
                sigpic
                A founder member of "The HA Pioneer Group" otherwise known as the "Old farts club!"

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by Gogs View Post
                  Sir you are spot on.

                  Over here we call it the foot well of the drivers seat.

                  For this method do not use DooMotion or any other motion sensor programme.

                  As stated it is simple. I use 4 mins for the off signal.
                  Gogs, this sounds pretty cool (and easy), whats the battery life like for your motion sensor?

                  Thanks

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by Martin E View Post
                    Gogs, this sounds pretty cool (and easy), whats the battery life like for your motion sensor?

                    Thanks
                    The battery life is crap, about 5/6 months. You have to remember that all the time you are driving it is sending. I am thinking about hardwiring the motion sensor into the cars Battery.

                    Just had a thought, as you are driving and drive past a house that has X10 it's going to pick up the on signal and confuse there system completely.
                    sigpic
                    A founder member of "The HA Pioneer Group" otherwise known as the "Old farts club!"

                    Comment


                      #11
                      FYI, we have a How-To on this subject...

                      Gogs; You can always use a voltage regulator so you don't have to use batteries. For instance, I've hacked a palm pad and regulated the vehicle's 12 volt system (pretty easy) to eliminate it's batteries for a different type of car monitor application.

                      If there is any interest, I can look into what it would take to do this (i.e. specific DC voltage required for your motion sensor model).
                      --------------------------------------------------
                      **** Do You "Cocoon"? ****

                      Comment


                        #12
                        X10 motion detector. Has anyone removed the light sensor and wired this with resistors to the car's ignition-on voltage? Should be easy.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by Gogs View Post
                          The battery life is crap, about 5/6 months. You have to remember that all the time you are driving it is sending.
                          I was kinda thinking this hence the question. But 5/6 months is something I could probably live with (maybe)

                          Just one more question, how reliable is it?

                          I used to do something similar but with Bluetooth. We'd enable Bluetooth on our mobiles and HomeSeer would pick it up with the Bluetooth plugin whenever we (or the phones) were in range ... like arriving on the drive.

                          We upgraded our phones to iPhones now and the Bluetooth is non existant, so that's the end of that :-(


                          Thanks

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by Gogs View Post
                            Just had a thought, as you are driving and drive past a house that has X10 it's going to pick up the on signal and confuse there system completely.
                            That's not likely to happen unless you are driving in their lawn. The distances these broadcast from within a car isn't all that great. I had trouble getting 20 feet when mine was mounted inside the car.

                            The CheaperRFID hardware is better for distance but these too "eat" batteries, especially the quarter shaped batteries.
                            One would think that some company would have come up with a plug-n-play solution in all these years for this need but again this is a niche market.
                            💁‍♂️ Support & Customer Service 🙋‍♂️ Sales Questions 🛒 Shop HomeSeer Products

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by Rupp View Post
                              That's not likely to happen unless you are driving in their lawn. The distances these broadcast from within a car isn't all that great. I had trouble getting 20 feet when mine was mounted inside the car.
                              You obviously have no experience of the UK. We have old houses here where the front door is 3-4ft from the pavement (sidewalk) and 6-8ft from the road!

                              Jon

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