PIR security light on notification

Would appreciate some advice and or help on notifications if an external PIR is triggered please guys

My setup
External mains powered PIR which detects movement and turns on a 30w LED security light, this is not hardwired into somewhere difficult, the mains power is simply plugged into a wall mains outlet

I have added a greenwave single node to the plug which reports power draw

my issue is the PIR draws a constant 0.5w when not active and when motion detect ramps up to 30w

I have various sonos peakers around the place and Sonos notify with sound working fine for anything i want

Automated lighting smart lighting is on/off, my front lighting is always on so it does not help, has anyone got any ideas how i can reliably get a notification if power draw goes above a set value from a switch that never goes off

I have CoRE installed but tbh i get lost when i try to fugure out what to do in there
Energy saver energy management only has send a text or push notification as options so i cannot get any voice output through alexa/sonos

would be ideal if someone could russtle up an app that is specific for this scenario as i am sure i am not the only one with a PIR activated security light that would like notification when on and even a log of events

So… correct me if I’m wrong but…
You need an app that registers the increase in power drawn by your light then ‘notifies’ you that someone is at the door?

Notification should be?

  1. Turn on a switch so you can use ‘big talker’ or ‘notify with sound’ or similar?
    Or
  2. Just talks through your sonos ?

I have a front door app that uses a break beam sensor to turn on some leds around my door which I can probably convert easily to do what you need. (I just need to change the ‘trigger’ to a configurable watts value)
At the moment if the beam breaks I get a ‘someone is at the front door’ spoken throughout my house too.
I’m not home until monday evening so if this is what you need then I can probably convert what I have already written for you to use. I’ll have a look on Tuesday for you - I should have some time to look at it then.

If you would please confirm if I have the right idea

Sorry for the late reply Cobra, i dont seem to be getting any notifications when there is a reply, i must be missing the subscribe option somewhere, tbh this forum software is less than ideal

Umm yes i think we are singing the same song

As things stand, external PIR that senses movement at night triggers 30w security light to come on
PIR draws a constant 0.5w from switch unless movement after dusk before dawn ( set on the actual PIR NOT in smartthings )
if movement > PIR triggers light to illuminate at 30w
values reported by greenwave single node switch seem accurate to written specs
i simply unplugged the plug that supplys power to the PIR > security light and added the greenwave single node

so what happens now is the single node switch reports back to the smarthings software it is always on as current is always being drawn, if i switch the switch off via smartthings software i kill the power to the PIR > security light, so having a simple on / off for an item that is always on does not work

If the smartthings software could detect via a smart meter switch, in this case greenwave single node, an amount between low ( 0.5w ) and high ( 30w ) configurable to users needs then this state change triggers an action, in my case i would prefer to have Sonos say a configurable sentence

Basicaly use the power change to trigger an alert rather than the normal switch is on/off as in my case the switch is always on all be it low powered

If possible it would be good to show the switch is off even IF it is on, maybe triggered by the low limit setting, anything below or equal to the low limit would show as off, even if it is drawing a small amount, this would also help in the shortcuts on smartthings front page as at present the switch always shows on as a shortcut, this is accurate but not exactly ideal, it simply shows there is current being drawn even though the actual security light is off

I did try and use a virtual switch, power state change > virtual switch to off > virtual switch trigger custom notification
but then the switch was left in the off setting, so i added a CoRE piston to try and turn it back on if the V switch went to off, this kinda worked but to be honest it was less than elegant and didnt always work properly

If we had a simple app that allowed some configurations on powers state change that would be great and i know for fact others would very much appreciate it

@fido
I wrote an app a while ago which measures wattage used to determine if a washing machine is running or has finished
This then announces via a speaker that the machine has finished.
I think I could probably adapt this to speak dependant upon watts being between 0.5 and 30
Hopefully I will be able to look at this in the next few days and let you know what I come up with.

1 Like

@fido
Ok… try this…

"Power Speak"

Thought it better just to create a new app rather than try to reconfigure the old one :slight_smile:

In your case… if you set the watts level to 15 or 20 then it should work ok.
If the power goes above the set level it should speak & turn on a switch (virtual?) , if below it should turn the switch off
I have also configured a delay between messages (in case of multiple triggers)

I have tested this a couple of times with various settings and it seems to work well.
HOWEVER… I have only tested it on IOS so don’t know how it will behave with an Android device as I don’t own one

Logging is probably best left switched off unless you need it
I hope this works for you

Andy

Stil no notifications about forum replys ?? i must be misssing something somewhere but that asside it works perfect Cobra :slight_smile: thank you very much

just tested and all is working as it should, the actual power node that shows the nodes details has been renamed to ( Front light Power ) this shows me the power is alive and at the PIR>Security light, and the simulated switch has been renamed to ( Front light indicator ) showing the state of the security light ( On/Off ) your code has actually achieved 2 things and both are very welcome indeed.
Your app is a must have for everyone with a dumb security front light triggered by a mains powered dumb PIR, simply plug in a power meter at the socket ( if possible ) and install your app… tada, notifications if the security light is triggered

And i will add i am using smartthings on an Android Samsung S7, tbh i am a dedicated Windows Phone fan but look where that got me, so i now use… all be it begrudgingly an S7 running a very good Windows phone front end… i hate the Android folder layout, one thing MS did very well was create a better front end but i digress the app works great, many thanks

@fido
You are welcome!
I’m glad it worked for you, and useful to know it works ok on Android, thanks
(For some reason there seems to be some differences sometimes)