Weird one…I have a Weber Spirit grill and Weber grill cover. I habitually forget to put the cover back on after grilling. After grilling, I leave the lid open and cover off to let it cool. Then I forget to go back outside later in the night and put the cover back on. I did this last night and it poured outside…eck
I’m thinking of ways HA could help with this. The best I’ve come up with is a contact sensor on my deck/grill with a magnet attached to the grill cover. The only thing is I’d probably have to superglue the magnet on and it could be easily prone to popping off as the cover is regularly taken off/put back on.
Another route would using my camera that I have that has a view of the grill. I’ve yet to set up my IP cameras with Frigate (so not sure if this is even possible) but maybe my camera could detect via color if the cover is on or not and after x minutes, it will alert me.
Before going down either route, I was curious if anyone had other suggestions.
I think I would be more inclined for @Didgeridrew’s advice because the grill gets VERY hot and you have then worry what happens to the glue, the reed switch, the wire, etc. The handle is a safe place to put a cheap tilt sensor. You could also probably put a pressure sensor on the handle to know if the cover is on too. The only downside is you give up some of your handle, unless you craft something to screw into it that extends the handle for your devices.
Whatever it is, you likely will need to make it easy to remove for the winter since any battery devices are going to suffer in the winter and you could lose it.
The only other option I can think of is to use an ultrasonic sensor attached to the grill table (if you use a console, like i do for my Webers) to measure if the lid is down or not based on the distance to the reflection. It might not help with the cover, but you could also put a lux sensor on there to determine if the cover is still off (presuming you were referring to the vinyl cover rather than the grill lid).