Driveway Monitor & HomeSeer?

[VirtualPanther]

I am looking for ideas on how I could implement monitoring of my driveway and have status updates in HomeSeer. I have a long driveway and before I decide to run a whole lot of wire down to its entrance, I wanted to hear some ideas. Any suggestions and success stories would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance...

[Pete]

I use a combination of wired sensors and HS events. The only wireless that I utilize is RFID for the automobiles.

[VirtualPanther]

I use a combination of wired sensors and HS events. The only wireless that I utilize is RFID for the automobiles.

Pete,
I just bought iAutomate RFID. Haven't even set all the receivers up where they need to be. I plan to use this for our cars. What sensors do you use to notify you that some other car is approaching?

[BillBurn]

I am looking for ideas on how I could implement monitoring of my driveway and have status updates in HomeSeer. I have a long driveway and before I decide to run a whole lot of wire down to its entrance, I wanted to hear some ideas. Any suggestions and success stories would be appreciated.
Thank you in advance...

I use the Dakota WPA-2500 driveway alarm. It is very reliable because it uses a magnetometer instead of a motion sensor or light beam (both of which are prone to false alarms). It is battery operated with a wireless bridge, i.e. no wire to run back to the house.

The 2500 has a 12v output which I hooked up to my ELK M1 (you could hook it up directly to homeseer with a GPIO module). Every time the alarm goes off I get an event passed to Homeseer from the ELK and can set up whatever events I want based on that.

Obviously this is a pretty basic setup as you just get a simple event every time the alarm is triggered, but it is sufficient for doing something like triggering a camera, light, etc. If you are looking to monitor whether a car is parked in the driveway the alarm probably wouldn't work although I'd have to imagine you could hack the magnetometer to serve that role.

One idea I had, but have not implemented, was to install an identical driveway alarm a little further down the driveway. This would allow me to figure out if the car was entering or leaving the driveway. However I can use the log and events from the garage door opening/closing (thanks to your post!) to approximate the same kind of info.

Bill

[VirtualPanther]

I use the Dakota WPA-2500 driveway alarm. It is very reliable because it uses a magnetometer instead of a motion sensor or light beam (both of which are prone to false alarms). It is battery operated with a wireless bridge, i.e. no wire to run back to the house.

The 2500 has a 12v output which I hooked up to my ELK M1 (you could hook it up directly to homeseer with a GPIO module). Every time the alarm goes off I get an event passed to Homeseer from the ELK and can set up whatever events I want based on that.

Obviously this is a pretty basic setup as you just get a simple event every time the alarm is triggered, but it is sufficient for doing something like triggering a camera, light, etc. If you are looking to monitor whether a car is parked in the driveway the alarm probably wouldn't work although I'd have to imagine you could hack the magnetometer to serve that role.

One idea I had, but have not implemented, was to install an identical driveway alarm a little further down the driveway. This would allow me to figure out if the car was entering or leaving the driveway. However I can use the log and events from the garage door opening/closing (thanks to your post!) to approximate the same kind of info.

Bill

Bill, thank you. Given the length of my driveway, I would really prefer not to have to run any wires. Are you getting a good signal from your driveway sensor, via wireless communication between the sensor and receiver? How long of a range can i realistically expect? Finally, and I am sorry for being so new at this, what exactly do i buy to make that sensor talk to HomeSeer, so that i can setup events to notify me on sensor activity? Thanks again.

[Pete]

What sensors do you use to notify you that some other car is approaching?

I utilize Dakota alert, wired outdoor PIR's and motion video zones.

[Pete]

Here's a quick overview. The driveway is about 35 feet wide by about maybe 70-90 feet long.

The driveway is covered with PIR's from the house out and from the periferal in utilized for the wired driveway sensors.

When the sprinkler system was put in I added numerous PVC pipeing underground from the house to the periferals of the lot.

Sometime in the future I am redoing the driveway with paver block.

[BillBurn]

Bill, thank you. Given the length of my driveway, I would really prefer not to have to run any wires. Are you getting a good signal from your driveway sensor, via wireless communication between the sensor and receiver? How long of a range can i realistically expect? Finally, and I am sorry for being so new at this, what exactly do i buy to make that sensor talk to HomeSeer, so that i can setup events to notify me on sensor activity? Thanks again.

The product's claimed max range is 2500 ft (you have to make sure you buy the version with 2500 ft range and the magnetometer as they tend to mix and match components). My sensor is about 300ft from the receiver through three walls and it's been 100% reliable to date. I've seen some people claim that they have it working over a mile from their house with a clear line of sight while others complain about the range. I would check the comments on Smarthome.com and Amazon.com about it. (I checked smarthome and it looks like they changed to model # to DCPA-2500 so not many comments on the new model) There's 50ft of cord between the magnetometer and the wireless transmitter, so I mounted my transmitter about 10ft up in a tree in order to transmit over a small hill.

I believe any of the GlobalCache Contact Closure modules (IP2CC or WF2CC) would work if you wanted to hook it up directly to HomeSeer, but I am not 100% sure as I hook up through my ELK M1. I have a GC-100 and use it to trigger 12V, but not to receive 12v events. You might want to ask a question in that forum to see if people are using those devices for 12 VDC output triggers or just ask a general questions as I am sure there's a pretty well known way to do this, I just don't know it.