Laser Trip Sensor?

Has anyone seen a laser or infrared trip sensor in z-wave or zigbee? Pretty much your typical mission impossible style sensors where breaking the beam would trigger an alarm?

I have a few very specific areas where motion sensors are giving too many false alarms or the area they detect is too wide.

Fibaro makes a universal binary Z-Wave sensor module (haven’t tested with ST) but with this you can likely use the NO/NC inputs to directly wire any IR Beam sensor pair and make it Z-Wave compatible.

just a thought…

CC

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This is on my future plans as well. Thanks for the idea @ccitarella

Just hook a garage door set to an arduino with ST shield. Prolly with googling you can find a how-to.

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I have these lasers around my yard for the past 8 years, made by optex. Acts as an invisible fence. They used to be hooked to my alarm panel. They are fantastic! I never get false alarms due to fog, high winds, falling leaves or heavy rain. My yard is 150 foot by 220 foot. I recently connected them to Remotec Z-Wave ZFM-80 - 15 Amp Dry Contact Module. During the day Sonos tells me which zone goes off and I get a text. Really nice driveway alert. At night when I don’t expect deliveries or meter readers I have Sonos dog bark and the appropriate light turn on outside.

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Yes, thats exactly what I’m looking for. Are yours battery powered or wired? I haven’t been able to find a lot of battery powered sensors. I think I found one from Optex but it was around $200 just for the sensor.

Mine are hardwired /powered. I got a deal on them from eBay (that was 8 years ago). They are low voltage wire so wasn’t too hard to install. They are worth it. I find they work so much better then any type of motion detectors.

This is very interesting to me as well. If anyone finds a way to make this work with off the shelf components (garage sensor and dry contact?) please let us know in the thread! I’m not loving the false positives on my front door motion sensor :frowning: And I chased down a thief (who I got arrested and is gone now) that took a package off of my front door just yesterday! Thanks to dropcam and ST!

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I just did a some Google Searches for DIY laser trip wire read some articles watched some videos. This video and tutorial gave me the best idea on how to do this for my setup. My idea would be to build this device, mount it and the laser (so I can do it all with 1 power source) to a existing post on my driveway, I will have to build a complete waterproof enclosure. I will then put a 2nd post on the on the other side of my driveway and put a small mirror on it that reflects back to the main post and assembly. The next step would be devising a power source, I will likely reuse a 3 or 4 battery solar charging battery pack (will need to do some testing to determine longest battery life, I may eventually just bury some wire and power it from dc power brick in basement). Lastly, I will not use the speaker at all instead add a monoprice open close sensor (hoping sharing power with the rest of the device) and wire the outputs to to terminals in the open close sensor, like I did with my step pressure sensor using the Easy Button community device type and smart app.

What ideas do others have? Anything simpler? Cheaper? My biggest delay right now is it’s late fall not so much fun working outside or digging post holes.

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That is awesome. I’m guessing you followed him until the police arrived?

I unfortunately have the exact opposite story. Someone came in to my yard and stole my patio furniture. I have a Smartthings notification on my gate but my phone was on silent at the time and they got away :frowning:

I’ve since installed a siren and multiple tablets through the house that are always on full volume along with sonos notifications (that don’t always work reliably though).

Surveillance cameras are also of little help if you can’t ID who the person is.

Hopefully others will learn from my mistake.

Yea I chased her on foot while on my phone with 911. She thought she lost me when she hopped in a big bush in front of a house. Luckily I heard it moving and just pretended to not know where she went until the police arrived. My front door dropcam is close enough to the action to see folks clearly and I provided the footage to the police.

I’m sorry I haven’t figured out how to post links here but if you go to Amazon and search for beam alarm you can get these for 30 to 60 dollars depending on the length you want to cover. In the past 8 years having these I’ve caught 3 kids (different years) going from car to car in the neighborhood looking for unlocked cars, I’ve also had deer twice set it off (came into the yard to eat fallen apples from my tree) and one neighbor chasing his dog that got away. They also come in handy on Halloween to alert me when kids are coming. I know when fed ex arrives, or the meter reader walks through my yard, it’s amazing the action your yard gets that you normally never paid attention to. I originally installed these for security, figured I wanted to be aware of someone before they kicked in my door or broke a window, now I know when anyone is within 75 foot of my house. The great thing about having them in Smartthing with Sonos is I can very easily silence them if I want to go for a walk at night /early morning and not wake the house. I actually have a mode called shhhhhh that allows me to come and go without tripping them.

@johnosstyn Very cool, are yours battery powered or wired? What device are you using to hook it up with smartthings?

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Hardwired… Just simple doorbell wire I tucked underground using a shovel. I use a Remotec Z-Wave ZFM-80 to connect them to Smartthings

I take it you have this one?
http://amzn.com/B001LFPB0M

Search for Outdoor 150M Triple Beam Alarm Active Infrared Detector. I have 4 of them two sets cover 200 ft and the other 2 cover 300 foot. They Chris cross at the corners so nobody can simply walk around them.

Mine are made by optex but these do the same thing

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The three beams are the key to not getting false alarms from leaves, rain, snow, blowing wind. Something solid has to “break” all three beams at once like a human, car or large animal (in my case a deer)

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Ok, ya I have numerous dear year round so that will be my only problem but it will solve the problem which is knowing when someone is walking or driving up my driveway, but as you stated it would be cool to create a beam all away around the property but my primary objective is to just monitor the driveway.

So it’s 4 wires 2 for power and 2 for the trigger?

@johnosstyn

You convinced me. Here is a better view:


What Z-Wave relay did you use? ZFM-80 seems to be a button switch.

@mattjfrank you are correct it’s 4 wire. I have 4 wires running from the transmitter to my house (2 for power 2 for trigger) be aware that another 2 wires have to run from the transmitter to the receiver. Wasn’t a problem for me because my driveway is gravel, I ran the section that crossed the driveway through a piece of conduit.

@mweston the Remotec Zwave Dry Contact is a push button swith however on the side of it is a place for dry contacts.