Does anyone know of a physical presence sensor?

🛎️ Get Help
1

I'm looking to sense whether a car is in the garage or not. So before I go and build something I'd like to know if one already exists.

I have no preference for Zigbee or Z-Wave.

I know one can use the cellphone to suggest presence but my personal choice it to keep the GPS on 911 only.

Thanks

2

Like a pressure mat maybe?

Edit: does the car have to be in the garage? Or just close by? There are zigbee presence sensors.

3

Thank you, I forgot about the Zigbee approach. I guess you can use any Zigbee device that you can trigger on command.

I'm a hardware guy, my initial thought is to use an distance device + arduino + Zigbee. Not difficult but takes some effort.

4

I don't know of anything that exist that would do this, but if you only need to know if a car is in the garage or not, using Hubduino and an HC-SR04 type Ultrasonic Module. You could place this on the ceiling of the garage over where the car is parked, but that the garage door will not block when open.

Then depending on the number you get back from the sensor, determine if a car is there or not.

2 Likes
5

That was my first thought. Although I would use this Zigbee device instead of Hubduino.

Haas Zigbee Solution

6

I use one of the old SmartThings arrival sensors to tell one one of our cars is home. It doesn't distinguish between garage and driveway, though.

2 Likes
7

Sounds good to me!

If you want to know when the car is there but not necessarily in the garage, I would go with a Smartthings presence FOB modified to be powered by the car's battery.

I will be placing one in my boat, so each time I get to the house at night time, deck lights will get brighter and docking lights will turn on. No more using the boat spot lights to dock!

4 Likes
8

I found it has surprisingly good range outside too.

9

I already have Zigbee on the deck inside the electrical/water plug housing, looks like a little lighthouse and has an RGB light in it that changes color during the night. So it should detect the boat a few hundred feet before I get there.

10

I use the Iris v2 4 button fob for the same reason.

11

Thanks for all the ideas :slight_smile:

I'm leaning towards the HC-SR04 type Ultrasonic Module mounted in the garage. The hardware is not too difficult and I don't have to worry about a remote floating around in the car.

1 Like
12

If you go that route, please let me know how it went, I was looking into this (but with an ESP8266) but have other projects in the works before I get to this.

13

Sure will. The Haas board is a little basic, however the great thing is that it will pass through any command it doesn't recognize. So it can easily be used to send data to the hub.
I have an Arduino Pro Mini setup with code for the HC-RS04 from when I was looking to put a oil level sender in my home heating oil tank. At that time I had no neat way to send data to the Hub so it fell to the wayside.

BTW The purple board is my design, however I will release it on OSHPark if anyone has any interest. I don't want anything for me except the feeling I get that someone else is benefiting from it. Oh and it would be a blank board, one would have to purchase (BOM avail) the parts an solder them to the board. The good news is there are a number of parts that may not need to be installed if not req'd for the planned use.

14

Clever placement of the distance sensor could also be used to inform the driver of the ideal spot to stop/park while pulling into the garage. In other words, a high tech ball-on-string marker.

15

Might have to try that out :thinking: This could be a lot more fun than WIFI.

16

That passed my mind (and kept on going :slight_smile: )

Would need two sensors and a horizontal display. For the other car we have...... a tennis ball on a string. Its been pretty reliable, been there for years. The only issue is I bang into it when working in the garage :slight_smile:

17

If you wish to purchase some purple boards, let me know and I will do what I have to do on OSHPark to release the board for general purchase.

18

LOL I did this for about 2 days and then installed a laser instead, it turns on when someone or a car passes the sensors at the door and turns off after 5 minutes. Now when my wife drives in, she stops when the red dot is at the edge of the dashboard. No tennis ball to hit my head on all the time.

Just ordered a solder on cc2530 board on AliExpress to test it out (already had one on order but the USB plugin version to make a sniffer). I'll see if I decide to use it or if I'll just tinker at first and see it the extra price is worth it over the ESP boards.

1 Like
19

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.