Flood/Water automation? How to be notified about a flood/water issue?

[RichTJ99]

BSR,

I got a few of the water sensor boards. I have two wires coming out of the DS10A & they go into the two holes in the board. When using Homeseer, the system reads them in alert mode. When the two wires are directly touching each other, they go into "normal" mode.

Is that just the nature of the DS10A? When the two wires arent touching its in alert mode (similar to a door being open), then the two wires are touching (door closed) the status goes back to normal.

How should this be setup to reverse this (swapping wires didnt work on the board)?

Thanks,
Rich

I was looking at that leaf wetness sensor & I cant quite figure what your supposed to do with it. Should the DS10A leads both be attached to the wetness sensor? Then when the circuit board gets wet, the DS10A senses moisture?

While understanding that X10 isnt very reliable, it certainly is an inexpensive solution for me (as I already have a few DS10A's sitting around & a W800 as well).

Is it that simple? If the wetness sensor board gets wet, does that ruin the board (one alarm per board)?

Yes, it is that simple. I have tested this. You just connect the wires to the leaf wetness sensor (instead of the included magnetic contact sensor). The new ones on HobbyBoard's site will not be harmed when exposed to water. When they dry out, they will toggle the DS10a back to "open".

Also, FYI, regarding using the DS10a with the W800, this does not use the "typical" X-10 powerline protocol.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

Yes, but it shouldn't matter with notifications. You can always change the status message from "normal" to "alert" if you would like with HomeSeer (forget offhand as it's been a while since I did anythong major with HS).

 

[SnyperBob]

I was looking into solutions for this as well. I already have ds10a's and a w800rf. Can I just solder the waterbug sensor to a ds10a?

one of these:
http://www.automatedoutlet.com/product.php...at=0&page=1

What about the 'x10 water sensor'? Can I solder this directly to a ds10a?
http://www.smarthome.com/71932.html

Thanks!

 

[RichTJ99]

BSR had mentioned this link:

http://www.hobby-boards.com/catalog/produc...roducts_id=1544

These are very inexpensive & they do work perfectly with the DS10A (though I do have a few questions myself).

I was looking into solutions for this as well. I already have ds10a's and a w800rf. Can I just solder the waterbug sensor to a ds10a?

one of these:
http://www.automatedoutlet.com/product.php...at=0&page=1

What about the 'x10 water sensor'? Can I solder this directly to a ds10a?
http://www.smarthome.com/71932.html

Thanks!

 

[RichTJ99]

So I ended up doing a little testing simply wrapping the wires from the DS10A through the holes of the hobby board. As I mentioned the default status for the DS10A with the wires not touching is open/alert, wires connected is closed/normal.

I put the sensor in my metal kitchen sink laying flat, turned on the water to get everything wet, setup Homeseer to email me every minute that the sensor is active (in my case normal). I got emails from 11:30pm to 8:00am.

I am guessing that is exactly how long it took to dry while laying flat with water trapped under & over the sensor.

I bought a loud horn that I am going to plug into an insteon appliancelink in my attic & setup an event that says blast the horn for 1 minute, recurring every 5 minutes. I will probably also add a homeseer "voice" event as well.

I dont think i set up anything wrong, but I figured I would check to see if this is normal. I am going to do another test in my basement (near the boiler where its warmer) to see how the email functionality works.

I do think one email per minute might be to many.

 

[SnyperBob]

Thanks for the info Rich, sounds like it works great.