I've looked through the forum and checked the approved devices, but I did not seeing much on driveway detectors. Because of wildlife in the yard, motion is out. I've ordered a Mighty Mule magnetic sensor to play with. They get decent-to-good reviews and are about 1/3rd the price of Dakota. My driveway arrangement looks good for placing one of these magnetic sensors. There's a hack out there soldering the receiver to a contact sensor, so if the MM actually turns out to be any good, it could be patched into the HE TTS.
Anybody worked with the Mule? Or have other brilliant driveway announcer options?
I use the Dakota Break Beam system. The Dakota receiver has a relay contact they can be connected to any open/close sensor that supports a dry contact.
I then have that relay connected to one of the zones on my Konnected IO security board as a motion sensor for reporting into HE.
I've been very happy with this setup. The Dakota Break Beam is solar charged so no need to run wires or change batteries. It also uses two separate beams that both have to be broken to set it off so it's been very reliable with no false alarms. It also catches people walking down the driveway which the magnetic sensors won't do.
Doing this as well. I have the new Zooz outdoor sensor at the end of the driveway and keep getting false alarms due to leafs and maybe the sun? I bought a 2 beam photoelectric sensor to use instead. Now I just need to choose a contact sensor! Z wave plus is preferred. I'm thinking the EcoLink contact sensor will be easiest since I can just screw the terminals down for the dry contact. Anyone have a better or cheaper option? Bonus points for z wave that can be easily powered by 12v or 24v battery that will power the photoelectric beams. I plan to hide in my bushes with a SLA battery. Hopefully that will last a few months so I don't have to hook up solar or power.
When I came home last night a buck and a couple of does were getting frisky (Well, the buck was frisky. The does, not so much.) beside my driveway. This is the reason motion or beam detectors won't work here.
I set up the MM magnetic sensor and it worked without any tweaking. The indoor receiver has a feeble alarm making it pretty much worthless unless you're nearby when it sounds. (That sells secondary receivers, of course.) This setup definitely needs HE to make it viable. Here's the tutorial I found:
I know this is an old post but I am just getting started with HE integration. I have a Might Mule driveway alarm that I am interfacing. I've been trying to find how you did you driveway announcer but can't seem to find anything on it.
Can you fill me in?
You do not make any modifications to the outdoor unit, except to match the dip switches to the indoor receiver per their instructions. On the indoor receiver, you'll need to solder a contact sensor to the circuit board. When I first posted this, I had followed the above video exactly, using a zwave Ecolink DWZWAVE2.5-ECO with screw terminals that can be used for an external contact or switch . Because I prefer zigbee, I later modified an Visonic MCT-340 E to have external leads and replaced the Ecolink.
In here looking to see if there's been any ZigBee contact sensors come up that now have screw terminals. This hack is still a good solution, even tho I have found "dropping this sensor in a puddle of water" might cause it to have increased battery drain.
Interesting. I supposed I'd want to cross-check this with our garage openers to be able to announce when someone other than us comes up the driveway. Anyone done that?
