Control signals to tap into

[hmadsen]

So i am thinking of making a runway style driveway.

My driveway is made up of these square concrete tiles, i have marked the 2 parking spots next to eachother with red tiles and the rest is just grey. These are not very visible when dark and there is a "kerb" pretty close to the leftmost spot where the Tesla is parked.

I plan on taking the red tiles out and drilling a hole in the middle of every other or third and installing some LED's, to illuminate the driveway when i come home, like a runway style light.

It would be awesome if i could somehow automate this, i have an idea with a small transmitter that can send a signal, like for example the garage door opener, and turn on the light.

Easiest way would be if i could tap into some signal on the Tesla so whenever the car was in Drive or Reverse and in range, the lights in the driveway would illuminate.

So, is there somewhere i can tap into the Tesla and get a "high" or "Low" signal whenever the car is in D or R and would turn off when the car is put into P. (Or only high/low when in P)

 

[KiwiME]

Ok, I'll bite since I like this sort of thing. Could you use the Tesla's WiFi presence to trigger the signal? For example, an ESP32 scanning for nearby SSID signals might see your EV and trigger the lights?

I don't know if the car has an SSID beacon but there must be ways to detect it. If not, noise, pressure on the first tile, or a photoelectric beam? How about sensing the PWM frequency of the DRL's?

 

[jmaddr]

Connect the lights to a home automation hub.

Then for the coming home part, create a geofence automation like shortcuts (iOS) or Tasker (Android) which triggers a POST to your home hub to light the lights when you enter your home geofence. Then set an automation to trigger a post to turn them off when you disconnect from your cars Bluetooth and at home (or just a simple timer).

For leaving your home you can setup an automation to have the hub light the lights when you Bluetooth connects and it’s nighttime and then another automation to turn them off when you leave the geofence or a simple timer.

Lots of options here.

 

[hmadsen]

Hi

Thank you for the suggestions i will look into it.

My own idea after thinking more about it was more to do with a simple RF transmitter.

I found a receiver and some very small transmitters, that will only reach maybe 20-30 meters, if i fitted this to the running light circuit, it would transmit whenever the running lights are one, which as far as i can see is whenever the car is "on"

Receiver would get the signal about 10 seconds before i got to the driveway, and when i turn off the car, the running lights also turn off and the receiver would stop receiving and thus turn off the light.

 

[hmadsen]

Connect the lights to a home automation hub.

Then for the coming home part, create a geofence automation like shortcuts (iOS) or Tasker (Android) which triggers a POST to your home hub to light the lights when you enter your home geofence. Then set an automation to trigger a post to turn them off when you disconnect from your cars Bluetooth and at home (or just a simple timer).

For leaving your home you can setup an automation to have the hub light the lights when you Bluetooth connects and it’s nighttime and then another automation to turn them off when you leave the geofence or a simple timer.

Lots of options here.

The tasker idea is nice, but then all users of the car needs tasker on their android.

I have home assistant, if i end up going the automation way, i am probably going to do something integrated here.

Home assistant actually have an integration that i installed, there is even an entity called "Device_tracker.location_tracker" but sadly atleast for now it only reads "out" or "Unknown"

If this had "home" when the car was home and the update frequency for this tracker was for example once every 5 seconds it would be perfect to trigger a Shelly to turn on. I dont think the update frequency on this would be often enough, even if would show the correct value.