Resolution Products Wireless Driveway Sensor Review

[ddennerline]

I received the driveway sensor today and installed. I configured as Aux1, so that NextAlarm can send me email notifications. I tested it a few times, and it worked correctly. There are a few concerns.

1. I am not sure why the sensor doesn’t have the txid wireless serial number implanted on sticker. This leads to second issue.
2. Enrolling the device is rather clumsy because you have to remove the battery and hold the device while holding odd shaped sensor body. I nearly dropped the sensor while trying to manually learn the device into Elk. The sensor body is made of plastic. They really should have put a small button or made sure the txid label was present (maybe I missed finding the txid?)
3. The entire device is plastic – including the mounting parts. I hope the sole reason is not reduced price – at least they could have included metallic ground stake. I suspect some of the parts have to be plastic (or other non-metallic material) in order to not interfere with accurate detection. I wonder if you can buy individual plastic parts. There’s no way that plastic stake can be driven into my clay soil without digging up the ground. The soil would then not be suitable as an anchor.
4. Mine didn’t come with a post mount – will have to contact manufacturer.

 

[inline]

The wireless number is on the sticker, that's how I enrolled mine.

 

[ddennerline]

I have been using this driveway sensor for more than month now. It’s really quite nice to know someone is outside your house. In addition, it eases your mind when the stay mode countdown timer comes on as you sort of know who has come home (i.e., spouse).

I added the following ElkRP rules so a text message is sent to me if a moving van has pull up to my garage while I am not home. The rules try to avoid normal coming/going situations.

The only problem I have found is that my father-in-law creeps down the driveway. He manages to avoid tripping the sensor. I will probably play around with sensitivity, but I live near a busy street.

; Create a custom armed away cutoff timer
WHENEVER Home (Area 1) IS ARMED AWAY
  THEN TURN V_ArmedAway (Out 1) ON FOR ArmedAway (Cust Set 1), RESTART TIMER IF RUNNING

;Driveway sensor sends email if armed away cutoff timer has expired
WHENEVER DrivewayEnter (Zn 1) BECOMES NOT SECURE
  THEN ANNOUNCE DrivewayEnter (Zn 1)
  THEN TURN V_Driveway (Out 2) ON FOR 2 MINS

WHENEVER V_Driveway (Out 2) STATE IS TURNED OFF
	 AND Home (Area 1) IS ARMED AWAY
	 AND V_ArmedAway (Out 1) STATE IS OFF
		 THEN SEND EMAIL MESSAGE 4 TO xxx(Email1)

 

[apostolakisl]

We did have storms today with lightning and I did get a few false alerts, just FYI. Seems that all magnetometer based solutions will pick this up...

 
Perhaps get a real lightening detector.  Set it up so that when the real lightening detector trips, it shuts off the driveway/pseudo-lightening detector.  Like if you have an Elk, connect the real lightening detector to a zone, when it trips, have a rule that bypasses the zone that is connected to the driveway detector for a set period of time.