Looking for a device to help with an interesting automation. My whole home battery/inverter setup will close a dry contact when the battery SoC gets low enough to call for a generator to run, when the batteries are full, the contact opens to cut off the genny. I have the generator end figured out, but I need an effective way to sense the status of that dry contact at the sending end to trigger startup and shutdown.
My preferences would be:
Z-wave (800, 800, or 500 if need-be) or Zigbee 3.0.
Powered by 12vdc, or USB if that's the best I can do.
No need to solder on leads, looking for a device intended for this purpose with a terminal block on it.
Cheap and easy to obtain, like on Amazon...
I'm aware of the Ecolink devices - I use one on my mailbox, but it seems like they've gotten long in the tooth, expensive, and not that easy to source. I also believe I could get what I want from a Zen17, but that's pretty spectacular overkill, it seems.
This seems like a niche that must be better served in the market somewhere by a cheap, one-trick pony?
I know I could do this with ESP8266, but I prefer the reliability of Z-wave, or at least Zigbee. Also, looking to avoid having to write a sketch and debug and QC test it.
After looking around again, I ordered a Zen17. I don't see any better value proposition, even for this simple task. Plus I get ZW800 and a 5 year warranty...
One thing you might consider is a watre leak sensor. Although they are not designed specifically for dry contacts, many of them have screw terminals on the bottom of the device to which you can add wires to your contactor. The leak sensor will report "wet" when the contact is closed and "dry" when the contact is open.
Some leak sensors have brass contacts on the bottom rather than screws. The screws are the easiest, but if you get one with the brass contacts, you can solder the wire to them.
I am not impressed by Ecolink devices. I have one tilt sensor with a wired reed sensor hooked up to the screw terminals that has worked well for the past few years.
