I have deer sprinklers around our garden that are controlled based on whether or not a person is detected in the garden. Works pretty well so far. But the price of a missed person event is a good spraying! So I'd like to have some sort of indicator for someone walking up to the garden, to indicate whether or not the deer sprinklers are armed. Best I've come up with so far is a small, dot LED that is red or green depending on whether the deer sprinklers are armed. I don't want it to be noticeable unless you're looking for it. And it needs to be battery-powered, outdoor rated. But I don't know if that exists as a product. Kinda doubtful. Anyone know of anything like that? Or have any other ideas for my use case?
I've never seen anything like that. Best I could tell you is dig up a centralite night light plugged into an outdoor outlet. Set your rule to turn it on when the rule is active..
Not aware of any existing products of this type but as a electronics DIY guy, I would guess that it would be pretty easy to take apart a Switchbot Bot and to add a LED that is activated depending upon the position of the robotic lever and powered by the battery powering the Bot. I don’t use Switchbot products so cannot speak to the reliability, range, battery life, nor how weatherproofed it can be made but this would seem to be an easy thing to do.
Also, in your use case, does the indicaor light have to be battery powered? Can you just plug in a Hubitat compatible light and plug it into an outdoor outlet that can be seen from the entry point to your garden?
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Yeah I recommended that above but thinking more since they're hard to come by, he could use a zigbee/zwave outlet with a standard mini light inside a clear outdoor outlet housing.
I mean, ideally, yes - so that someone walking up can just know with a natural glance whether they are about to get pelted with a deer sprinkler. But, your responses did give me an idea of a place where I could put an outdoor Phillips Hue LED strip that might be within eyesight of the garden. A person would have to glance backwards intentionally to see the status, but that could work if there's no better option.
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A controller like this one with 12V input with a 12V battery pack like this one connected to a waterproof strip. You could house the controller/battery in an air tight container.
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Yes. I have a similar application in a slightly different use case. I have an indicator LED (a small but very bright small LED made for strobe-lighting on EMS vehicles) that lights up if there is a history of my security system going off mounted so that it can be seen when approaching the house from the driveway. Although we get notifications of any alarm events on our phones, this just serves as a visual reminder to be cautious when returning home if something has set off the alarm while we were gone (in the event the intruder is still present).
I suspect battery power LEDs while not mutually exclusive are not a popular item.
Perhaps one could find a device that has two states but draws no power unless changing state.
Can you share more details about this? Do you have a link to the product(s) this uses? Is it battery powered?
Don’t have a link (I did this two years ago) but you can Google for automotive strobe or emergency LED lights. They are 12vdc for automotive applications and so are also made to be exposed to the elements (they come in a variety of bezel designs, housings, colors, strobe rates, brightness, etc.). I have mine powered by simply placing a 12v wall wart into a Zigbee controlled outlet plug. The outlet is controlled by Hubitat to turn on via a virtual switch whenever my security system is alarmed (my DSC system with Envisalink is integrated with Hubitat via the Envisalink Integration). Because I had already integrated my alarm system into Hubitat, and I happened to have an extra Zigbee outlet plug on hand and a spare 12vdc wall wart laying around, the cost was basically for the LED (around $15 IIRC) plus my labor (which I do as a hobby anyways).
I also use this technique to run a very powerful emergency strobe light attached to my outdoor security speaker box (speaker is used to make automated verbal warnings to any potential “intruders” when the system is armed). This emergency strobe light is used to make our house more easily identifiable should any Fire/EMS/LE need to be called (or for any first time visitors to the house).
Rather than the Centralite Night Light (which I have and cannot recommend unless you just want on/off control), I would recommend a GLEDOPTO USB ZigBee RGB+CCT LED set (I also have a few of these).
https://www.amazon.com/GLEDOPTO-Zigbee-RGBCCT-Compatible-Control/dp/B08FC6ZSF4
Can be powered by any USB, the LED strip is IP65 (not the controller of course, so that would need to be enclosed), and the strip could be cut to whatever length.
Could always power it using a solar USB battery pack.
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I was recommending that just because it's on or off (though you can manually set the color) I have a couple of these I use in bathrooms.
