So I’m trying to get the state of my electric fence remotely. So when its hits an error it sounds a siren and flashes a light. Does anyone know how i could take those outputs and get them recognized by home assistant so i could then throw a notification back to me.
What kind of hardware is it? Do you have a link?
What happens when it fails? Meaning how do you know it isn’t working?
Hi its this unit below.
https://www.nemtek.co.za/infrastructureSecurity/Energizers/merlin-stealth-m28s.aspx
When it fails it not longer sends pulses down the electric fence. (because of broken wire etc)
Im thinking that maybe there is a noticeable difference in wattage drawn between working and not working state, in which case i can use a Sonoff POW to report back. Unlikely that it will work, but I can try.
That was my first thought and it’s pretty cheap to test out. I am using one to monitor if my AC is on or not.
The other option I see would be to monitor one of those LED lights on the unit (I would assume one is for some sort of error?) Using an esp8266 and a photoresistor to know if it’s on?
That would work too, I just wouldn’t know where to start.
So the electric fence also has a battery in it. Considering this, i would find it highly unlikely that the wattage would drop much at all if the fence is in an alarm state.
So this https://www.instructables.com/id/NodeMCU-With-LDR/ would be a good place to start for how to detect light. The main issue I see with the LED reading would be how close they are together.
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Well it seems at there is no noticeable wattage drop so that fails. Think i will just solder an additional LED inside the energizer so as to not interfere with the outer LED visibility of the alarm light. That being said, i guess that lighting the LED is just a relay closing, so if i could just detect where that takes place it would let me know when its in alarm state.
Soldering the additional LED is a great idea. I did the same thing to monitor/control my coffee maker. The best part about the LED/photoresistor is it keeps your circuits optically isolated.
I should note, that in my case, even adding the additional LED messed with the external display of the LEDs. The LED I needed to monitor wasn’t getting enough juice to power two so the external one is too dim to see.
Yes, so then i could maybe check across the LED with something like this for the few volts that will power it.
Never used one but couldn’t hurt to try. I assume it’s pretty cheap?