Trip sensors connected to internet

Devices & Integrations
1

Hello all! I am pretty new to sensor technology, but I was wondering if it is possible to leverage Samsung SmartThings tech to be able to send a time stamp to the internet every time a certain trip/motion sensor is triggered? For example, if I walked through my door and thus through the sensor, could that be sent through a router and recorded on a remote server? I was just curious how far the IoT trend has progressed thus far.

I appreciate any insight into sensor tech, and would love recommendations for hardware that can process the above.

2

Yes, this can be accomplished in a couple of ways. The easiest is to use IFTTT to record to a Google Sheet setup.

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3

If I understand your question, SmartThings already does this automatically for every device attached to the network. It logs every event and the logs are maintained for seven days. If you just want to review the logs you can open your phone anywhere and see the log for that specific device.

So basically anything that happens on your SmartThings network is already recorded to the logs for your SmartThings cloud account, and you can access that many different ways. But the data is only kept for seven days so if you want it for longer than that you have to save it yourself somewhere.

Here’s the log from one of my motion sensors. This is just a screenshot from the official SmartThings mobile app.

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And this FAQ discusses the various different types of logs that are available:

You can also collect the information in various ways and use it for other things. A lot of people use grovestreams. But, also as @theedpope suggested, you can just use IFTTT to log it to something.

And here is more about grovestreams:

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4

Thanks for the quick response! I haven’t yet been able to look deeply into the API, but I was wondering if you had more insight into the functionality of the motion sensor. How far is the range for the motion sensor and is it adjustable (change range from 5ft to 10ft for example)? Can the motion sensor detect direction of a movement? Thanks for the help, I’ll be looking deeper into the tech later this week.

5

The SmartThings hub is a single plastic box which contains four different protocol managers. There is a Z wave controller, a Zigbee Coordinator, an ethernet connector which can take you out to the Internet through your regular Internet router , and a Bluetooth radio which is not currently turned on.

So there are literally dozens of different motion sensors that you could use with your SmartThings account. Different ones have different ranges. There is one which is manufactured by SmartThings, but you’re certainly not limited to it.

In terms of motion sensors, pretty much any motion sensor which is a certified zwave device or uses the zigbee home automation profile (ZHA 1.2) can be connected to SmartThings, although if the manufacturer has added some proprietary features they might not all be available.

Typical range for motion sensors intended for indoor residential use is normally 30 feet from the point of the sensor, but there is variation.

SmartThings’ commitment to open standards is one of the most attractive things about the system for many of its customers as it gives us a lot more choice in the devices we can connect. :sunglasses:

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