So what I’m wanting to accomplish is that when I remote start my car and it kicks the cigarette lighter on I’d have a z wave dongle plugged into a usb. When it connects to the smartthings it opens the garage. Does anyone know of a cheap dongle I can get to accomplish this? Maybe even a better solution?
Maybe just a motion or light sensor in front of your headlights. Most cars have auto lights these days. I am assuming your car is in the garage and that is why you want to open it automatically. Sound would be the other option but I haven’t seen much about stand alone sound detectors.
I don’t know of anything that exists. You could create your own by using a presence sensor where you remove the battery and hook up a step down converter to convert the USB 5v to 3v:
Then when the presence sensor turns on it will connect and be flagged as present and your garage can be set to open.
Another idea is they make very small wireless access points/routers such as:
This particular one runs from usb power so it will power up when your car turns on. Search this community for “wifi presence” and you will see several solutions for routers running AsusWrt or DDWrt where you can make a device present when it connect to to your Wifi network.
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I may end up going this route. Thanks for the input!