Yet another Supercharged Hawkeye mod

So I had a chance to stay at the new Palazzo suites in Las Vegas recently and had marvel at their super-sensitive occupancy sensors in every room. I could literally twitch my finger and the detector would see it. It just reminded me of how dismal the Hawkeye sensors that form the backbone to my own home's sophisticated lighting control are compared to professional solutions.

My house makes its own decisions about lighting levels based on many things. To improve the accuracy of these decisions, I need more sensitive motion input to my lighting macros than what hawkeye detectors can provide. Increased sensitivity allows me to lower light-out times and eliminate the occasional motion "miss" that hawkeyes are notorious for, ensuring 100% light-on response when someone enters a darkened room. Plus, having unobtrusive ceiling mounted sensors looks much more professional than Hawkeyes with their big "X10 Pro" logos...

My search led me to test many PIR and multi-sensor motion detectors. I finally settled on the Honeywell 997. Like most security oriented detectors, this one features a normally closed relay which opens when motion is detected. Sweet. Just dial up one of the many Hawkeye mods that turn this device into a contact-close sensor and Voila!

Too bad it didn't work. The sensor mods out there replace the Day/Night CDS with a switch/load resistor. Unfortunately, the Hawkeye isn't programmed to instantly react to a change here. In fact, it took about 4 seconds. Way too slow. So, I decided to engineer my own mod targeted at the PIR input to the PIC.

When finished with this little mod, a Hawkeye will instantly react when the connection breaks and will send an X10 on about every 5 seconds until the connection is closed again. This makes it a perfect wireless transmitter for just about any "fail safe" security device you can think of.

Here's how to do it:

Start by removing a 1meg resistor, the CDS cell and the green LED. Here's the locations:



Next, solder a 1K quarter watt pullup resistor between +3 and the anode location of the now removed green LED. This is the PIC's GP0 input and needs to be high to cause code transmission. Here's a pic showing this:



Finally, connect a 2 conductor wire between ground and the GP0 input. Just solder it to the resistor on one side and the convenient ground jumper near where the CDS cell was as shown:



Now notch out the side for the wire to exit:



and Bada Bing: a highly sensitive wireless X10 transmitter for the myriads of fail-safe relay based sensors out there. No more 5 second lag between sensor re-arms either. Every time the contact opens, this "pwn3d" Hawkeye will instantly transmit the programmed House/Unit code.

So how am I using it? Think cost-effective contact based input to HCA or any other HA solution that is compatible with a W800RF32. Check out the post containing a full writeup in the Fortress showcase thread for details. That post is located here.

Enjoy the mod!

This is a really impressive mod. do you mind if I move this to the How-To forum? Also, do you see any reason this wouldn't work with the DS10A sensors?

I like this mod but I don't understand where the 2-wires go outside of the Hawkeye device. To a contact switch? So when it detects motion it transmits an X10 command and ... or is that when it detects a contact closure it transmits an X10 command (like a DS10)?

I wonder what the Palazzo suites in Vegas is using for super-sensitive occupancy sensors...

Mark

Would love to know that one as well!

I may just have to book a suite their and find out

I have modified the "Big Red" buttons for use with N.O. contacts before (they are a lot cheaper than Hawkeyes). I wonder if they can be modded to work with N. C. security contacts?

MStan said:

I may just have to book a suite their and find out

Click to expand...

They might frown upon you taking the room apart...

Unless you dropped a ton of $$ in the casino!!

Geez...that begs the question...how much $$ is a TON of $20 bills?

--Dan

No idea if this is accurate, but sounds good: $18,160,000.00

MStan said:

I wonder what the Palazzo suites in Vegas is using for super-sensitive occupancy sensors...

Click to expand...

I'm kicking myself for not pulling a chair up and checking the sensor out in greater detail... I've been scouring the web trying to find it but no luck so far. The lens was optical, not prismatic however suggesting some sort of mirror based device. There were no ultra-sound ports either. The lens glowed red so softly when it detected motion that I didn't even notice it until the room was dark.

123 said:

I like this mod but I don't understand where the 2-wires go outside of the Hawkeye device. To a contact switch? So when it detects motion it transmits an X10 command and ... or is that when it detects a contact closure it transmits an X10 command (like a DS10)?

Click to expand...

The two wires connect to an external switch of any kind. If the switch is opened, the hawkeye will start transmitting X10 on every 5 seconds until the switch is closed again. As such its a "contact opened" transmitter. This appears to be more compatible with many security systems where a number of normally closed devices complete the circuit. The alarm condition occurs when the circuit is broken.

Dan (Electron) said:

...do you mind if I move this to the How-To forum? Also, do you see any reason this wouldn't work with the DS10A sensors?

Click to expand...

No problems Dan, I've linked to this thread from my showcase thread but I can just change it. Concerning DS10As, I'll have to test one to see if it has the same sensitivity to contact closure input. High "re-arm" times = higher light-on latency if the first transmission is missed. Very high re-arm times also would increase light-out times since the time between triggers would be long.

upstatemike said:

I have modified the "Big Red" buttons for use with N.O. contacts before (they are a lot cheaper than Hawkeyes). I wonder if they can be modded to work with N. C. security contacts?

Click to expand...

What's a "Big Red" button?

kwilcox said:

The two wires connect to an external switch of any kind. If the switch is opened, the hawkeye will start transmitting X10 on every 5 seconds until the switch is closed again. As such its a "contact opened" transmitter. ... The alarm condition occurs when the circuit is broken.

Click to expand...

Does the modification disable the HawkEye's motion detection? I suspect it must otherwise the combination of motion/contact-opening detection would make it an odd duck.

In effect, you've modified the HawkEye so that it works like a DS10A, yes? The contact-switch opens and the HawkEye transmits an RF signal. The big difference is that the HawkEye uses signalling that is understood by an MR26A receiver. An MR26A cannot receive signals from DS10A's, and other so-called X10 security devices, so this mod is very useful to MR26A owners (like me).

Yes, the Hawkeye's built in motion detector is disabled. It becomes a simple transmitter based on a contact opened event. It transmits as often as this event happens too which makes it ideal for use with external motion detectors such as the 997 where highly sensitive motion based triggers are desired. I've not played with the DS10A in this role. My only concern would be if it had a "re-arm delay".

kwilcox said:

What's a "Big Red" button?

Click to expand...

These Big Red Buttons transmit both X-10 security and regular X-10 RF. You can put a wire across the button contacts to trigger with a contaact closure just as you would on a garage door opener button.

Ahh. Got it. I'll have to check them out.

I guess I should clarify the purpose of this mod. My primary focus was to increase the sensitivity of the hawkeye motion sensor by replacing its POS built in PIR & associated circuitry with the ability to connect a vast number of superior, remotely located 3rd party sensors. As an added benefit, this mod gives wireless X10 contact closure triggering to a number of HA software systems that work with the W800RF32 but don't understand X10 wireless security signaling.

From a personal perspective, HCA does understand security sensor input over a W800RF32 and can use it as a trigger input to any macro, so I'm definitely going to get my hands on a DS10A to see how they stack up.