LED status indicator

Is there an easy way to build a small LED status board that could provide visual indicators for contact sensors, motion sensors or anything driven by hubitat. I'm thinking maybe 6 or 8 LEDs that each represent a device triggered by hubitat- Without taking up a lot of real estate and could be discreetly placed to provide a quick visual indicator of sensors. I ?think? an Arduino may be able to do this without a lot of complication but I'm not sure where to start... Any help/ideas would be appreciated.

I've been thinking along the same lines, but have decided that since I rarely use the HE dashboards the indicator panel would need to be (zigbee) multi-gang switches with led indicators. That would allow me to reset the indicator right there at the 'board' when I've read it.

Like so:

If you are comfortable thinking Arduino then this is likely the item for you.

Haas Zigbee

The board Dr Haas sells has 4 LED already on it. I'm sure you could replace them with LEDs with a better form factor (i.e. through panel etc.)

It's designed as an arduino shield but you don't need the Arduino.

Basic setup.

  1. Enable the Hubitat Zigbee pairing
  2. Power up the Haas board, it will connect with the hub.
  3. use @ogiewon 's Hubitat driver as a base, modify it if you find other things you want it to do.

It is that simple :slight_smile:

As you read the link further I made a non arduino "carrier" board for the basic cc2530 Zigbee board. Its a little smaller and has some filtering to protect external inputs but it doesn't do much more than Dr Haas' board.

I currently have one operating sending data from my cellar measurements.

I'm working on a second being an ultrasonic sensor to tell Hubitat my car is in the garage or not.

The 3rd is planned for measuring the fuel oil in my heating oil tank.

John

I thought about the Homeseer WD200+ which would be more appealing to me but I think a small custom built, mobile unit would be a lot more useful- something that I could move and use where ever suited me. I think JohnRob is it....

Thanks- I've tinkered with an arduino a little, but just haven't found anything about the interface between hubitat and arduino. Sounds like the board you're talking about can either be a stand-alone or as a shield on the arduino. I tried to find "Dr. Haas" but could not find anything- Are you talking about the Monalisa? I'll take a look.

I would suggest a nodemcu instead - uses the arduino IDE, is super cheap and has wifi so can be placed almost anywhere - with hubduino to communicate with it.

Dumb question (I say only because I'd rather go the easy route myself). Wouldn't be easier to simply get a cheap tablet (like a fire tablet in kiosk mode) And simply have the dashboard up showing status of said sensors? For instance, your monitored sensors all splayed out on the dashboard showing green until one shows red (and even alarms when it's down) to get your attention. I'd think that would be easier than hacking together a simple LED board. (As much geeky fun as that would be for me to do)

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Did you try the "Haas Zigbee" link in my initial post?

I have a WD200+ and use it for some status' . It works fine however I've found the indicators kind of small and difficult to read if you are off axis (at least with green and blue colors).

I agree you could use the nodemcu. I had one sensor working with a nodemcu. I changed it to the Zigbee board because I liked that it went directly to the hub and did not rely on my router. And the zigbee route just appealed to my sense of design.

Pros (for this zigbee board):
it is extremely simple to implement with NO extra parts required for the above requested LED indicators.
Its a Zigbee repeater.
Does not depend on a router.
Has built in A/D (acturally 4 of them). The nodeMCU A/D is lacking in accuracy at he low end.

Cons
Cost more. However if you wish to purchase a cc2530 board on ebay and put the Haas firmware on it you, add the LED's have a $6 solution.
Is limited in range by the Hubitat Zigbee mesh. (here the mesh might be and advantage in some installations).
Communications must be in the form of 15 byte messages.
The firmware is essentially "frozen" it does what is does. If you need more you have to add more hardware. For me I've added a ProMini board to measure distance using a HC-SR04 sensor. If I was using the nodeMCU I could connect it directly to the sensor (with level sifting).

In the end they both work find. As I said I've had both working in an application with no issues. So it really comes down to personal preference.

I was originally thinking of doing something similar. However, then I switched to Inovelli Red dimmers, which have that programmable LED bar on the side. I've hooked up some of those to indicate various events.

I have the HE dashboard on my phone and on a tablet but want something small and very basic. LEDs make the most sense for me. Plus I'd like to venture out and learn something new and maybe even pass it on.

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Yes- The link is what led me to "Monalisa". ...and I agree the tiny LEDs on the WD200 are way too small for these old eyes.

I like your idea for the zigbee alternative- Keeping it close to Hubitat without relying on WiFi is very attractive.

I think a device like that would be very useful, affordable and without a lot of complexity. All I want is an LED device to mirror Hubitat sensors- Pretty basic for those of you gurus but will be a project challenge for me.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and any guidance is greatly appreciated.

You're very welcome.

If you choose to go the bare cc2530 route, earlier in this thread I documented how to install the Haas firmware (with his approval) on a bare cc2530 board. Oddly enough I used a NodeMCU to do this. Chosen because it was a handy 3.3V board and the cc2530 is 3.3v

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