Wireless indicator light

kwschumm

Active Member
I'd like to have an indicator light in our laundry room that can be controlled by an M1. This light would indicate when a garage door was open. Since wiring it would be a problem it would be nice if it were wireless, changing batteries wouldn't be a problem.
 
Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel I'd like to ask if anyone knows of a product that does this, or has fashioned something like this already and likes the result.
 
Anyone? Please share.
 
This wireless relay would do what you need.  Just connect an indicator LED plus small power supply to one end, and connect the other end to the M1.  The only bad part is that it's expensive.
 
https://store.ncd.io/product/wireless-contact-closure-transmitter-receiver-1-channel-spdt-relay-2-way-2/
 
There are some much less expensive wireless relays on eBay.  Most of them work with keyfob type transmitters, though, and would take a bit of modification to have the M1 "press the button."
 
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=wireless+relay&_sacat=0&LH_TitleDesc=0&_osacat=0&_odkw=wireless+relay
 
In my large box of round tuits I've had Divoom, and a Dotti display boxes..  Never got around to programming them.  They're basically 16x16 color pixel displays.  They'd fit right into the notion of alert indicators without rising to the level of an actual screen.  My plan was to use them to indicate if they cat's litter box was having any issues (Litter Robot w/WiFi).  Full, stuck, low-litter, etc.  But they've been reticent about publishing an API and the displays aren't as convenient-to-program as I would have liked.  (Not impossible, but not 'ready to go').
 
Homeseer also makes a plug-in motion/temp-sensor that has a single multi-color LED indicator light.  
 
So there's stuff "out there" but not necessarily plug-and-play.
 
Many of the wireless controllable lights/plugs support IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/). You can set up IFTTT to act on any number of triggers. I suspect you can get the ELK to send out a email or text message when the garage door zone status changes with a unique message based on if it is opened or closed. Then trigger the light using IFTTT.

Here is what it would look like:
- Garage door opens
- ELK sends out the message "opened"
- IFTTT reads the message and sends the light a command to turn on

- Garage door closes
- ELK sends out the message "closed"
- IFTTT reads the message and sends the light a command to turn off

This will allow you to integrate a wifi light bulb with relative ease and it will only cost you the price of the wifi light bulb.

I did this with my Christmas lights and window candles this year.  I always hated walking around and having to turn the window candles on/off in each room so this year I bought inexpensive wifi plugs (you can get them for less than $5 each) and used one in each room for the window candles. I integrated the wifi plugs with an ELK M1 and CQC. I triggered the lights to come on/off based on time and/or alarm status. For example, when the alarm was "armed night", CQC would read the change in the ELK arm status, and send a command over a URL address (a "webhook" in IFTT) and IFTT would read that command and turn the candles and Christmas tree lights off. It worked great and was inexpensive enough that I simply packed the plugs up with the decorations for next year.  An added bonus is that all this works with Google or Amazon assistants, so if I wanted to turn the Christmas tree or candles on/off I could just speak the command to my Alexa as well.
 
Thanks for the input folks, a lot of new ideas here, I'd never heard of IFTT. Seems quite useful.
 
I woke up this morning with an obvious simple method to do this.
 
We're using UPB lighting so a plug-in module and a simple plug-in light would work with a few lines of code.
 
Should be easy!
 
Consider adding automated lighting to your Elk system, it would serve this purpose and do much more. I installed UPB lighting and love it. I use it to turn exterior and interior lights on and off based on sunrise and sunset. You can also automate AC outlets to go on and off based on rules.
 
Mike.
 
I use a Zigbee controlled outlet in my garage, with a red LED bulb plugged into it to tell me if the alarm is on or off. Works great. UPB would work as well, as would Z-wave or whatever you have. Zigbee is very quick, which is a plus. Not talking big expense here, basically the cost of a controlled outlet and LED bulb.
 
kwschumm said:
Thanks for the input folks, a lot of new ideas here, I'd never heard of IFTT. Seems quite useful.
 
I woke up this morning with an obvious simple method to do this.
 
We're using UPB lighting so a plug-in module and a simple plug-in light would work with a few lines of code.
 
Should be easy!
 
Yeah, if you already integrate UPB lighting, then an appliance module/plug is probably the easiest method.  Perhaps not the cheapest, but probably the easiest.
 
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