Is there some type of Laser Sensor that I can use to see if someone pulls into my drive way? I don’t really want a motion detector, but some type of other perimeter sensors for my drive way, and backend.
Anyone have ideas?
Well… This is certainly a product worth building if it doesn’t exist!
Some folk’s “driveways” might be quite a long distance from the SmartHub and/or WiFi router though, so choice of radio & antenna (& power) may be a challenge.
Basic laser / receptor would be like those on garage door openers. Pretty cheap parts.
Searching this forum, found this link.
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in the home security domain these are called “driveway monitors”. To be most reliable they should have 2 or more beams for larger objects, unless you want to alert on squirrels and leaves too. You could also look for “curtain sensors”. It’'ll be nice when they build Zwave into some of these, but I think you can use the guts of a cheep Monoprice door sensor and a PCB relay to transmit your homebuilt driveway alert direct to Smartthings without the driveway monitor base station.
It’s not lasers just IR.
If you have extra regular motions you can narrow range the regular motion detectors by masking the face. I think I’d use two and require them both to alert within X seconds (cross-zoning). But I don’t know how to implement that timing in ST.
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I used one of these buried beside my driveway and then I hooked an arduino to the wireless receiver that sits in the house. It only detects cars and my mower going by it. Mighty Mule Wireless Driveway Alarm
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Andy,
What Arduino did you use? I’m a newbie at this any advice would be much appreciated. We just moved to a new house. We have a very long driveway and a barn further behind our house. We really want to know when someone comes down the drive way. I was hoping to integrate your suggestion with turning on lights and a Sonos alarm.
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Andy, do you have any pictures or advice for hooking up the Might Mule wireless receiver? I was hoping I could use the inside terminals of a contact sensor to send an event, but I’ve yet to open up the mighty mule receiver to see what’s inside.
This is one of the projects on my list to get back to. I had it working with the arduino to an old homeseer installation but shut that down a little while back and have been meaning to get it hooked up to a contact sensor or iris button. The receiver doesn’t have an easy to interface signal that I found from a quick look around on it so I used the visitor led as the signal though once it is triggered then it needs to be reset to turn the led off so I had the arduino doing that. I may look more at interfacing the audio signal or some other section so it doesn’t need the reset. I have been missing having those notifications recently so I will try and get this worked out sometime this week if I can.
Thanks for the info. Best luck of getting it hooked up again, it’s way down on my todo list but I’m going to try to attempt it at some point in the future too.
Did you get anywhere with this? It looks like the magnetic sensors work better with less false alarms than motion and/or laser. I would like to have SmartThings notifications and automation triggered when a car is detected.
Try this ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071F4LKWW/ref=sspa_dk_detail_5?psc=1 ) and then the receiver has a relay dry contact that can be used to output to this or similar product https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Z-Wave-Multi-Input-Output-Contact/dp/B00B6RZ7MM,, That will receive an input that will in turn trigger a zwave signal.
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