A new idea?
- Thread starter JohnWPB
- Start date
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
Hmm, if it takes 3v now it should be able to handle six... (hehe, refer to Palm Pad Hack How-to).
It WORKS!
I bought a cheapie 12v relay at Radio Shack the other day. I wired up the relay to the fuse panel, to a fuse that became hot when the key was turned on (Side of the fuse that is through the fuse, so if there is a short, the fuse will blow). I then took 2 wires ( 2 VERY thin wires, (twisted pair) from an old cat5 cable) and ran those to the relay, and then to the 2 wires on the Door/Window sensor.
I then tucked everything away nice and neat under the dash. Then ran the 2 thin wires behind the molding to the left of the winshield, and over to the sun visor, The DS10a is stuck to the top of the visor with double sided tape. When the visor is in the up position, absolutely nothing is visable.
With that all done, it has been working great for the past few days! When the car is started, it sends a signal to HS that the car has been started, when the car arrives home and is shut off, it sends the OFF signal to HS so it knows that the car is now home.
With a bit of scripting, I am going to make it a bit more intelligent. So if the car is started, and within a set number of minutes the off is again received, know that the car actually did not leave. With multiple on and off's, HS will actually know that there was trouble starting the car. Though I doubt this will happen any time soon as the car only has 30,000 miles on it so far
If anyone is interested, I can post more details on how it was done and what I used. All said it's less than $20 in parts.
I bought a cheapie 12v relay at Radio Shack the other day. I wired up the relay to the fuse panel, to a fuse that became hot when the key was turned on (Side of the fuse that is through the fuse, so if there is a short, the fuse will blow). I then took 2 wires ( 2 VERY thin wires, (twisted pair) from an old cat5 cable) and ran those to the relay, and then to the 2 wires on the Door/Window sensor.
I then tucked everything away nice and neat under the dash. Then ran the 2 thin wires behind the molding to the left of the winshield, and over to the sun visor, The DS10a is stuck to the top of the visor with double sided tape. When the visor is in the up position, absolutely nothing is visable.
With that all done, it has been working great for the past few days! When the car is started, it sends a signal to HS that the car has been started, when the car arrives home and is shut off, it sends the OFF signal to HS so it knows that the car is now home.
With a bit of scripting, I am going to make it a bit more intelligent. So if the car is started, and within a set number of minutes the off is again received, know that the car actually did not leave. With multiple on and off's, HS will actually know that there was trouble starting the car. Though I doubt this will happen any time soon as the car only has 30,000 miles on it so far
If anyone is interested, I can post more details on how it was done and what I used. All said it's less than $20 in parts.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
John:
Glad this worked out for you, it was a very good idea. Can you post the details of the relay you used? Just want to look at its coil resistance so I can see how much current you are pumping through the cat5 type wiring
BSR
Glad this worked out for you, it was a very good idea. Can you post the details of the relay you used? Just want to look at its coil resistance so I can see how much current you are pumping through the cat5 type wiring
BSR
BSR, The catalog Number is 275-0226.
Here is a diagram of how I wired it up:
How the wires are hooked up:
1) Hooked to fuse block to fusable side that becomes live when the ignition is turned on. (18 Gauge wire)
2) Chasis Ground (18 Gauge wire)
3 & 4) are the contact that become closed when 12v is applied (When the ignition is turned on). This is where I used the thin cat 5 twisted pair wire. I don't know too much about this stuff, but I don't beleive there is any voltage for say going through the cat5 wiring. It is basically just a open and closed circuit. If there is voltage, I would immagine it to be VERY low in both voltage and milliamps. I used the thin wire just due to the fact it was easy to hide the wire behind the molding.
EDIT
I just tested the voltage, and there is actually voltage. It is from the DS10a itself. I am reading 2.874 volts across the DS10a's contacts. I have one here on the desk I just tested. Now I am currious as to why the DS10 puts voltage out on the 2 contact wires. This being the case, I am supprised that the batteries last so long in these things.
Now, on an entirely different note:
I was in the local dollar store here the other day. They have a rack of cellphone car chargers. Many have wondered how to get low voltage, as in BSR's case with the Palm Pad Hack. The chargers range anywhere from 3.5 volts up to 7.5 volts depending on the brand of phone and what it requires. Its a cheap way for sure to get low voltage for use in a vehicle. They actually had the car charger for my Motorolla MPX220 smart phone. I picked up 3 of em for a buck each Cingular wanted $20 for it!
Here is a diagram of how I wired it up:
How the wires are hooked up:
1) Hooked to fuse block to fusable side that becomes live when the ignition is turned on. (18 Gauge wire)
2) Chasis Ground (18 Gauge wire)
3 & 4) are the contact that become closed when 12v is applied (When the ignition is turned on). This is where I used the thin cat 5 twisted pair wire. I don't know too much about this stuff, but I don't beleive there is any voltage for say going through the cat5 wiring. It is basically just a open and closed circuit. If there is voltage, I would immagine it to be VERY low in both voltage and milliamps. I used the thin wire just due to the fact it was easy to hide the wire behind the molding.
EDIT
I just tested the voltage, and there is actually voltage. It is from the DS10a itself. I am reading 2.874 volts across the DS10a's contacts. I have one here on the desk I just tested. Now I am currious as to why the DS10 puts voltage out on the 2 contact wires. This being the case, I am supprised that the batteries last so long in these things.
Now, on an entirely different note:
I was in the local dollar store here the other day. They have a rack of cellphone car chargers. Many have wondered how to get low voltage, as in BSR's case with the Palm Pad Hack. The chargers range anywhere from 3.5 volts up to 7.5 volts depending on the brand of phone and what it requires. Its a cheap way for sure to get low voltage for use in a vehicle. They actually had the car charger for my Motorolla MPX220 smart phone. I picked up 3 of em for a buck each
Cingular wanted $20 for it!
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
John:
Sorry, but I did not realize you used 18 gauge wire for the solenoid's power. You should be good with that (overkill in fact) because that coil resistance is 400 ohms and 18 gauge wire is good for a few amps (don't know the exact number, but it doesn't matter as you are safe with that wire).
I thought you were using the Cat5 wire to the solenoid as well, my mistake.
As far as the charger's for the cell phone, not sure if they would work or not because I don't know how "filtered" they are (they could be noisy).
You could try them out knowing you might risk one of your DS10A's. The only way I know to see how good the filtering is would be to use an oscilloscope. The other thing you could do is throw a 1000 microfarad electrolytic capacitor (watch the polarity) on the charger's output and see if that would "filter" the output enough to get it to work.
Maybe smee will jump in here with a better suggestion.
Sorry, but I did not realize you used 18 gauge wire for the solenoid's power. You should be good with that (overkill in fact) because that coil resistance is 400 ohms and 18 gauge wire is good for a few amps (don't know the exact number, but it doesn't matter as you are safe with that wire).
I thought you were using the Cat5 wire to the solenoid as well, my mistake.
As far as the charger's for the cell phone, not sure if they would work or not because I don't know how "filtered" they are (they could be noisy).
You could try them out knowing you might risk one of your DS10A's. The only way I know to see how good the filtering is would be to use an oscilloscope. The other thing you could do is throw a 1000 microfarad electrolytic capacitor (watch the polarity) on the charger's output and see if that would "filter" the output enough to get it to work.
Maybe smee will jump in here with a better suggestion.
HiJohnWPB said:I was just trying to think of a cheap (of course!) and easy way (Of course again) to monitor when and who's car was home and away.
I have a motion sensor in my car that helps to know if it is home or away, but I wanted something a bit more accurate, as to if the car is leaving or arriving home, not just when motion was detected.
I had a bit of a revelation, and don't recall ever seeing an approach like this. So I figgured I would run it by a few of you and get some feedback, on the feasibility.
I have a W800, as many of the users here do. I was trying to think of a way to make use of that, as I have a pretty good antenna on it, and get very good range with it.
Next was the preverbial "light bulb" that went off. Couldnt a simple door/window sensor ( DS10a ) from X10 be used? My thought was to have a 12v relay that would switch closed when the car was on, and open when it was off. This realy could then be tied into the door/window sensors contacts.
Once that was done, when the "on command" was seen by HomeSeer, have it simply set a virtual device to "on". This would remain on until an off command was received. Then when the car is turned off, the command would then go to HS and again update that virtual device.
With this new device, you could tell who's car left, and at what time. You could also tell who's car, and when it returned home.
This seems SO simple, and I was wondering if anyone knows of any downfalls to this approach. I know the door/window sensors will report their status after a long period of time just to ensure the status is correct, but this shouldnt be a problem at all when the car was away.
So is this really something we have all overlooked up till now, has it been suggested before, or it just won't work for some reason??
If this will work, it would be less than $15 to monitor each car's activity. ($11 for the DS10a from Automated Outlet, and $3-4 or so for the relay)
Also thought of a new tagline
"WTF is usually bad for WAF."
Maybe this device might be of use...not sure if its available as yet though
http://www.nwe.net.au/ha/VA.html
HTH
Frank
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