New user, couple early questions

[larryllix]

Good to know! I'm also looking for something for the garage door (an open/closed sensor) that could alert me if it's open more than X minutes. Or even when I do pull in and open it, turn on the kitchen lights so I never walk into a dark house.

 

I'd LOVE to come up with a way to alert to something (car, person, etc) coming in the driveway and maybe turn on some lights or blast a horn. Driveway is about 250' long but I have power at the end on two poles across from each other. Got broken into in broad daylight several years ago so I'm sort of paranoid.

Smart Home sells garage door kits based on a magnetic sensor and an Insteon IO-Linc. There are instructions in the UDI wiki to do this except that a status reversal option is used which causes problems with the nightly query in ISY sending an actual status. With a little programming experience it shouldn't be too hard to change the polarity of the contact sensing or write you own from scratch. 

 

I use one of these just for status only. Some are afraid of the phantom ALL-ON Insteon / ISY bug opening their doors at strange times. Some have gone to Ethernet activated relays, ELK security panel I/O and some ZWave system.

 

A CAO Wireless Tag could give you the position of the door along with temperature and humidity for under $100 for the first unit (about $22 to $45 each after that). ISY has a RES interface that anything Ethernet can stuff variables, activate programs or scenes from. ISY is an awesome box that will amaze you more and more as you learn it's secrets,

[stusviews]

Do not get the Garage Kit. The supplied magnetic contact switch just causes ISY problems if you want a device such as a keypad button or lamp to be lit when the garage door is open and unlit when it's closed. Instead, buy an I/O Linc and a magnetic contact switch that provides the desired result.

 

If you want something lit when the garage door is closed and unlit when it's open, then the kit will do that. But the switch linked to offers both choices.