Hello,
Thinking about eazy solution to monitor car presence, no need for specific arrival/departure…
I’ve come up with next ideas:
a ) USB Sinilink stick flashed with tasmota and then use with Lan presence monitor or other…
device: Sinilink USB Switch Module (XY-WFUSB) Configuration for Tasmota
b ) Zigbee battery or usb powered any kind of device that would appear as online in smartthings.
c) radar mmwave human sensor zigbee but… I think its not going to work for presence of car…
The idea is to run routine: if car1 present and time period from x-y then run IR heater under carport for 10min… Defrost
Another alternative, and the one I myself use, is an IBeacon, but that requires adding a couple of additional third party apps and works best if you have an iOS device.
I use the IBeacon method because I want the detection area to be very small, just the length of the wheelchair ramp to my front door. If I use a Wi-Fi message, it will detect me while I’m still on the bus at the end of the block and it can take the driver several minutes to get my wheelchair untethered so I can get off the bus. That would all be fine for your particular use case, I think, but it doesn’t work for mine because I don’t want things to start happening until I’m actually close to my front door.
If you’re interested in the IBeacon method, here’s the thread on that, but again I think the Wi-Fi message will be better for most people unless, like me, you want a very small detection zone.
As far as the mmwave occupancy sensors, people outside of smartthings have been using similar devices for years to detect whether parking spaces were empty or occupied. As long as you can defined the zone to be where you want, it should work. But I don’t know of anyone using one of the devices that currently works with smartthings for this use case, so I don’t know if there any specific issues you run into with the ST implementation, and in particular, if zoning works well enough for this.
Here’s a typical example from Texas instruments of how an MM wave sensor can be used to detect if a parking space is empty in a parking garage. But that one isn’t integrated with smartthings, I’m just including it as an example of how the mmWave technology works for this kind of use case. Note the ability to set a very specific detection zone, which is the part that I think may be missing from the smartthings integration for the MM wave sensors that do work with it at this time.
So… the MM wave technology can definitely be used to detect the presence of a car in a particular parking space. But I haven’t heard of anyone setting up that use case within the smartthings platform. Hopefully if someone does know which devices could do this, they will post.
(BTW, aqara is currently working with Samsung to improve their integration with smartthings, and they have specifically mentioned their FP2 mmwave sensor as part of that project. So we may see better zoning in the official integration in the future, but I don’t think it’s here yet.)
Would a simple ir beam sensor connected to a door/window sensor with external inputs work for you? It wouldn’t detect a specific car but it would let you know when something was in the car park.
Some Ir beam sensors have outputs for normally open (NO) or normally closed (NC). It’s how it communicates that the beam has been tripped. In the photo below it’s labeled Test the Port.
