I have dogs who stay in kennel during the cleaning woman working in home but when she finish her job and leave my home I am away and I wish I could release the dogs from their kennel with a Smart Things controlled lock.
Can’t you just ask the cleaning service to let your dog out?
To automate it, you’d have to fabricate your own device to interface with your create and then use a zwave relay to trigger it.
I wonder if you’d be able to take an August lock and fabricate an adapter to turn the lock on your crate.
Either way, you’ll need to fabricate a way to use the crate lock.
There are Wi-Fi controlled dog crate locks used for exactly this purpose. The gadget is just a sliding bolt with an actuator, designed to be added to an existing dog crate. They’re not that expensive. (I’m in a wheelchair and have a service dog, so I actually looked into several of these kinds of gadgets last year.)
Once you look at these, you’ll be able to see that they could easily be adapted to any smartthings-controlled plug in power switch. (Some might take a little rewiring. If you don’t want to do that yourself, you could have an electrician do it really easily. But if they’re designed to just plug into a WeMo plug, you just use a SmartThings controllable plug instead.)
There’s one brand, Easyout, which can be used with a plug. That should be smart things controllable if you just use a ST plug instead.
The Easyout inventor’s website looks a little hokey, but the device has been on the market for a couple years and a lot of small pet supply retailers carry it. Take a look at the guy’s videos, he comes across as much more professional there and you can really see what the device is.
http://easyoutpetrelease.com/?page_id=621
And this video with the inventor shows the parts and how it actually works.
One community member, @johnr , made a much more durable weatherproofed device to automatically close a chicken coop door, but I think that would be more than you need for your use case. You can see the basic concept is pretty similar to the dog crate one above, but in a much more heavy duty form.
As the CosmicPuppy, I have to say that your best bet is to search for a “pug-and-play” solution…
Did you see the beagle in the first video above?
By the way, the model that is closest to a plug-and-play solution is the easyout deluxe, which you can only buy direct from the inventor. He takes PayPal. Costs just under $100 with shipping, then you use your own smartthings-controllable plug.
But you will still have to attach the actuator to the dog crate. No wiring required but may need a little drilling.
All of these seem to be for smaller dogs. My German shepherd has broken out of wire crates with ease.
@Luis what breed of dog are you creating?
He does a double lock model, it should work for big dog crates. The crate has the same crate integrity as it did before, you’re just adding a slide bolt actuator.
But you could always go for the chicken coop version if you need something stronger.
My kennel is big for my Rottweilers the point is find a device able to release the dogs from my work compatible with Smart Things
No I can’t because the dogs are trained to home defense. Would be great if use a lock wi fi connected with my SmartThings Hub.
Great!!! I believe this one works good opening the gate.
My solution would be best for opening and closing the door (designed to work with a sliding door). Just as an FYI they will be available for sale in about a month. See CoopBoss.com for more information. Thanks JD for the mention!!