Here’s my use case. We recently moved and are splitting time between house and an apartment and we have an old dog with three legs. He is very smart and well trained. In the old house, he rang a bell to go outside to use the bathroom and then would let himself back in by jumping up and “twisting” the lever-style door to let himself back in.
Now, we pretty much have things figured out in the apartment, which is in the city, because he goes outside on a schedule. It also pretty limited what he can do outside, like we can’t just let him run around outside. He knows that and doesn’t mind.
However, at the new house we have a large front and back yard. He can ring the bell to go outside, either to just hang out or to use the bathroom, but we have door knobs instead of lever handles so he can’t let himself back in. And even if he could, the doors are brand new and we don’t want him scratching them up so we aren’t going to switch to levers. However, once he decides to come back in, if he gets impatient he starts jumping up and trying to twist the door handle, which let’s face it he’s a dog with three legs—it just doesn’t work well. But bless his little heart, he just keeps trying which means his claws on the door.
So what I’ve seen from this forum might be a good idea is an Apollo MTR1 or 2 placed near the door, and then a Bluetooth ESP32C3MINI1 on his collar. He would let himself out as usual by summoning us and ringing the bell, but then when it was time to come in he would just come and sit down in front of the door and the MTR sensor would pick up the ESPC3 and set us a message.
So I’m curious your thoughts on which sensor would be best, the MTR 1 vs. 2 and if that ESP-32-MINI I or 1U. (I read the documentation for the MTR1 which linked to this https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0792/0959/5187/files/ESP-32-C3-Mini_Datasheet.pdf?v=1712943635) and if, when I order the MTR if I also need to order the GPIO header?
That use case is my primary objective, and if there is no difference in capabilities between the MTR 1 vs 2 I’ll describe some other things I’m contemplating that might provide some additional information and, maybe those would inform the decision. We let the dog roam in the fenced back yard, but sometimes he opens the gate and escapes. He doesn’t go far, but I just don’t want him in the neighbors yard, so I was thinking of a secondary automation that would trigger if he went too far away.
PS we also have cats that it might be useful if I received a notification that they escaped, but from what I read I could do that with the ESP-32-C3 sensors and don’t need the MTR for that type of automation.
Thanks for your thoughts everyone.