This may or may not be a Newbie question, but I am fairly new to Hubitat and thought I would start here. Please feel free to redirect this post to the appropriate area.
I have been trying to get a Zooz 4in1 Motion sensor to trigger a Z-Wave lamp when motion is detected in the driveway. My experimentation has been going on for at least 3 weeks (on and off as time allowed). My primary problem is the Heat of the day. A sensitivity level that would work in the morning would be too sensitive in the hot summer afternoon and then change again when the sunset. I’ve tried mounting the sensor in difference locations, even inside looking out the window. I’ve tried adding different lengths of PVS pipe over the sensor to narrow the motion detection area. All my experiments were not consistent.
I just read a Hubitat Community post where someone suggested using a camera and BlueIris as the motion detection device and then somehow incorporating it into Hubitat Rule 4.0.
Looking at BlueIris, I can get motion to trigger an outside a script. But, would this be an Hubitat Script? Would I need to involve IFTTT?
Can anyone point me to documentation or describe the steps?
I am thinking others have had to gone through this same learning curve and I would love to learn from their experience.
If vehicles then use a typical driveway alert system that can be connected to a dry contact to send the alert to Hubitat via z-wave or zigbee.
If general cameras are 'ok' with lots of false positives from shadows and changing environmental factors. Some but not all of this can be worked out with the software you choose. Blue Iris is a good package. You can use the HTTP alerts from BI directly with Maker API and not involve IFTTT or any external system at all.
Driveway sensors use magnetic detection or IR beams to detect the motion of vehicles. They relay through RF to a base which would be inside... a lot of the bases have dry contact connections to integrate with alarms and other systems. You can then use those connections to interface with Hubitat.
There's a brand called Mighty Mule that makes a sensor you bury next to your driveway that detects vehicles. It only works if you have enough clearance from the road and your house but in the right situation they're said to be fool-proof.
Those are certainly cool, and based on the manual pretty easy to setup. Do you know of a way to hook up some form of dry contact to it? The sensor/receiver seems to be a closed loop sort of system from what I read....
You can connect Ecolink contact sensors to the base station dry contacts, and then use these to communicate the events to your hub. If you install TWO driveway sensors about 30 feet apart, you can even detect arrivals vs. departures based on which contact "closes" first.
Search in the ST community for explanations on how to connect these all up. While somewhat expensive, it is extremely effective. I also use a DA2500 remote contact sensor for my mailbox (which is 300+ feet away from my house)...
Took me awhile to find the documentation on the relay connections, but it's all there. Looks like a good option too. I definitely want to pursue one of these systems, I'll have to add it to the queue.
I really like the fact that it runs it's own wireless link, and I can place the receiver(s) anyplace convenient, and add my zigbee or zwave device with dry contact.
