Looking for a Zigbee tag

[manjh]

I am looking for a battery operated zigbee device that I can keep in the trunk of my car. In Domoticz I want to be able to see if the car is on the driveway, or if it is away.

I thought about using a simple temp/hum sensor, but the sensors I have donot update very frequently. Also, when I look at the "last seen" date and time on the device icon, it is not the same as the otherdevices_lastupdate value.
Goal was to have a small LUA script triggered by a change of the temp/hum sensor.

Ideally the device would be a beacon, sending out a signal periodically.
I know this is easy using an ESP unit, but that would not run on batteries for a very long time.

Any ideas? Suggestions?

[waltervl]

I have read this idea here before. Perhaps also by you

I do not think the zigbee protocol is build for this. In battery mode sensors only have very limited contact.
Perhaps with a powered device it will work better, it will announce itself better. So perhaps try a USB zigbee router. Ikea has had one that was 230V but was in real a USB device with separate 230V adapte. I don't know if they still sell them.

[pipiche]

Out of the Zigbee protocol, if the device is not reaching its network, I think that after a period of time where it trys to rejoin, it will just go on sleep.

[kimot]

Why so complicated when your 12V car battery can run ESP for maybe more than 100 years?

[lost]

Any ideas? Suggestions?

I have a zwave PIR (that also send temp, but as you noticed that's advertised only when there is some change & sometimes, even half a degree car be hours): A least, I know between PIR triggers the car was here or out. If there is temp reports in between I may even deduce the car was close to my home.

My goal was not to know if the car is there or not in my case. But 3 years ago my car was not there anymore in the morning so I wanted to have something that could be connected to my own domoticz scripted alarm system: So between 23h00 and 6h00 there is a car alarm mode that becomes active on top of house one, so if there is motion in the car this rings one of the sirens (the attic one, just over the bedroom) for 10s so I can get out & manage this "the indian lathi" way.

Not sure this may doable using zigbee: Not many zigbee devices in my system for now but range looks lower than zwave (already limited, not talking of more recent zwave LR changes). Anyway as all radio stuff this may be jammed.

Maybe a bluetooth tag for some apple/android find my device standard could be better for your usage, but forget a direct link to domoticz. I'm considering setting some on my cats as an alternative to GPS+4G that gets better precision but lack endurance & need a monthly subscription.

[Kedi]

I use this for my car and camper: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10050064 ... pt=glo2nld
Together with the cheapest 4G sim card you always know exactly where you car is and has been.
And if it is stolen you can track it.
I use Traccar on my NAS for my phones (there is a free app) and cars to track those and keep history for more then a year.
On Traccar you can send all kind of info to Domoticz very easely, like location, speed, and others.
That tracker uses only a few milliamps and with connection to the car battery it is alive for more that a year.

[manjh]

I use this for my car and camper: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10050064 ... pt=glo2nld
Together with the cheapest 4G sim card you always know exactly where you car is and has been.
And if it is stolen you can track it.
I use Traccar on my NAS for my phones (there is a free app) and cars to track those and keep history for more then a year.
On Traccar you can send all kind of info to Domoticz very easely, like location, speed, and others.
That tracker uses only a few milliamps and with connection to the car battery it is alive for more that a year.

Would the SIM card use data in tha bundle?

[manjh]

OK, today I decided to take the simple route. I have an ESP8266, installed Tasmota. Tried to set up a timer to send a message to MQTT every minute, but no success.
In stead, I found out the unit (by default) sends out a status message every 5 minutes, which is good enough.

MQTT passes this on to Domoticz, where it switches a heartbeat switch on. A device triggered LUA script immediately turns it off again.

Another LUA script is time triggered, and analyzes the age of the switch. If it is more than 300 seconds, the sensor is off or out of reach.
This is good enough for my purposes.

[Kedi]

I use this for my car and camper: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10050064 ... pt=glo2nld
Together with the cheapest 4G sim card you always know exactly where you car is and has been.
And if it is stolen you can track it.
I use Traccar on my NAS for my phones (there is a free app) and cars to track those and keep history for more then a year.
On Traccar you can send all kind of info to Domoticz very easely, like location, speed, and others.
That tracker uses only a few milliamps and with connection to the car battery it is alive for more that a year.

Would the SIM card use data in tha bundle?

Yes, but only a few Mb per month.
My cheapest provider has sim-only abo with 1Gb and 150 SMS for € 2,-- for the first 9 months and after that € 4,-- per month.
For € 48,-- you can can protect your car for theft, and with the phone App and Traccar you can always find your car where you have parked it.
There is a free solution on a chinese site to track your car, but I don't use that, because the Chinees might trcak you too.
I am left with something like 999 / 998 Mb free every month.
I use the SMS for setup and every day 1 SMS as a 'is-still-alive' message from the device to my phone.

I think it is really cheap to give your car a 'hidden' tracker.
B.T.W. Traccar that runs on my NAS in a docker container is freeware.

[manjh]

I use this for my car and camper: https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/10050064 ... pt=glo2nld
Together with the cheapest 4G sim card you always know exactly where you car is and has been.
And if it is stolen you can track it.
I use Traccar on my NAS for my phones (there is a free app) and cars to track those and keep history for more then a year.
On Traccar you can send all kind of info to Domoticz very easely, like location, speed, and others.
That tracker uses only a few milliamps and with connection to the car battery it is alive for more that a year.

Would the SIM card use data in tha bundle?

Yes, but only a few Mb per month.
My cheapest provider has sim-only abo with 1Gb and 150 SMS for € 2,-- for the first 9 months and after that € 4,-- per month.
For € 48,-- you can can protect your car for theft, and with the phone App and Traccar you can always find your car where you have parked it.
There is a free solution on a chinese site to track your car, but I don't use that, because the Chinees might trcak you too.
I am left with something like 999 / 998 Mb free every month.
I use the SMS for setup and every day 1 SMS as a 'is-still-alive' message from the device to my phone.

I think it is really cheap to give your car a 'hidden' tracker.
B.T.W. Traccar that runs on my NAS in a docker container is freeware.

Looks interesting. I just bought a new car with a full cat3 alarm, but it does not have a tracker and this could be a way to add it.
When I follow the link I can see 4 options: with/without battery, and with/without relay. I understand the battery, but what would the relay do?
Also, how do you configure the device?

About price: this is a pretty good deal at Aliexpress! The version without relay is € 17,19. I can see the same device at Bol.com for €72,50!!!

Update: when looking closely at the pictures on the Aliexpress offering, I see that the version without relay supports 2G, and the one with relay 4G. Sounds weird, why would you need a relay for that?

[BazemanKM]

alwaysconnected.eu had one bundle for all your sim carts. I have 3 trackers, 2 car, one personal. I use Traccar as well.

@kedi please share your domoticz intergration.

[gizmocuz]

Hmmm indeed your 12V battery can power an ESP for a long long time!

If all you want to know if your car is on the driveway, you could use two ESP's, one in the car that sends out a keep-alive message (ping) every minute (or faster), and one inside the house (close to the car) that acts as a gateway

If you use the ESP-Now protocol (which is standard supported these days), you get the signal strength as well.
The gateway could connect to a MQTT broker and update a sensor, which can be received by Domoticz (with MQTT-AD for example)

The range of ESP-Now is quite far, and the ESP in the car does not need to be connected to your WiFi network at all.

[sumitrathore]

Hello Everyone,
Has anyone used a low-power Bluetooth tag or beacon with Domoticz for something like this? Can it work as an alternative to Zigbee or ESP devices?

Regards,
Sumit.

[waltervl]

Hello Everyone,
Has anyone used a low-power Bluetooth tag or beacon with Domoticz for something like this? Can it work as an alternative to Zigbee or ESP devices?

Regards,
Sumit.

Good idea, with openMQTTgateway https://docs.openmqttgateway.com/#using-openmqttgateway which supports MQTT AD you can use bluetooth beacons

[Kedi]

alwaysconnected.eu had one bundle for all your sim carts. I have 3 trackers, 2 car, one personal. I use Traccar as well.

@kedi please share your domoticz intergration.

Ofcourse, Im my traccar.conf I added:

Code: Select all

    <entry key='forward.enable'>true</entry>
    <entry key='forward.type'>url</entry>
    <entry key='forward.url'>http://192.168.2.xxx:8080/json.htm?type=command&amp;param=updateuservariable&amp;vname=Location&amp;vtype=String&amp;vvalue={name};{latitude};{longitude};{altitude};{speed};{course};{fixTime}</entry>

I put everything in A Domoticz variable named Location
The string in Domoticz looks like

Code: Select all

<Naam>;51.9xxxx;5.5xxxxx;75.30000305175781;2.1388249045958516;163.22006225585938;1732883054000

In dzVents I convert all data for the right Domoticz device with

Code: Select all

    on = {
      variables = {
          "Location",
      },
    },

A function for the fixTime to 'normal' timestring is

Code: Select all

        local function convertTime(nTime)
            return dz.time.timestampToDate(nTime / 1000, 'yyyy-mm-dd time')
        end

Tnx for the alwaysconnected.eu I will look into it. Can you use SMS to the number to configure the tracking device?

[Kedi]

Sounds weird, why would you need a relay for that?

Use the 4G because 2G is not used anymore in Europe.
The relay can be used to shutoff the engine by an SMS command, in case your car is stolen.
Device is configured by sending some SMS commands.

[BazemanKM]

Tnx for the alwaysconnected.eu I will look into it. Can you use SMS to the number to configure the tracking device?

You can't sms to the number, i use another sim for that in de beginning to setup the device.

[sumitrathore]

Thank you very much.

[manjh]

alwaysconnected.eu had one bundle for all your sim carts. I have 3 trackers, 2 car, one personal. I use Traccar as well.

@kedi please share your domoticz intergration.

This is a cheap solution. The one time cost for the sim card is €6,95. A 1 Gig data bundle now costs €4,95 (black friday deal).
The tracker costs €25,19 from Aliexpress.
So the one time cost is about €32, plus the annual cost of the data (now €4,95). Not bad!

[Kedi]

Yes, it is really low cost and works perfect for 1 of my cars already for more then 8 years, without a problem.
And now with the hint from @BazemanKM it will be a lot cheaper in the future. Tnx.
I ordered a few sims and a 1Gb bundle for black friday prices already.
And will change them as soon as the come in.