I've decided to stick everything I do with this into one thread, and it won't be of much interest to the majority of forum members as what I'm trying to achieve is the baseline you probably already have
i.e. 1) My van has no deadlocks
2) Despite paying Westfalia £300 for the alarm option, my van has no interior sensors
The combination of these two things makes my van about the easiest to steal things from in the country, not ideal for a camper holding all your belongings...
So I'm trying to make my own way of solving these, starting with the alarm. My idea is to have an interior sensor connected to an Arduino microcontroller board. When triggered, the Arduino would be programmed to open a relay connected to a wire that would then make the van think the door had been opened, setting the alarm off.
I have some Arduino boards and accessories knocking around as it's an occasional hobby of mine so I set about experimenting with ultrasonic distance sensors connected. I spent quite a while on these without much success, unfortunately they seemed to trigger false alarms often enough to be unusable and although I could programme most of these out on the Arduino, to get rid of them altogether took so much error correction that they only triggered about 6" away, no good for my purpose. So I turned to PIR sensors, and I know the issues with these, I was around in the 80s when there were car alarms with these that rapidly moved over to ultrasonics due to false alarms triggered by changes in temperature affecting the PIR, but I'm giving them a try. I have got hold of a couple of interior ultrasonic modules from scrap cars and I may give them a try too, but I have no documentation for the connections and I may have to use them on the analog inputs so I'm pressing on with PIR for now. The sensor (s) I use will be remote from the control unit in the final fitting and I will use 6 core burglar alarm wire to connect for futureproofing. The arduino can always be reprogrammed in situ.
So I quickly knocked up a prototype using tweaked code available off the shelf and a piezo buzzer playing a little tune when triggered. This will obviously be replaced by the relays in the finished unit.
I'm using a larger Uno board with all the headers for convenience while setting this up but the final unit will use a smaller Nano with soldered connections. This morning I tried it in the van to test for sensitivity, false alarms and positioning. It's being powered by a USB power pack for now.
I videoed it being triggered but couldn't get them to upload but it worked as soon as my head came through the drivers door or a hand was waved through one of the open rear windows. It stayed in place for an hour without any false alarms but I realise this isn't representative of real life use as it was in a garage with a constant temperature and no sun falling on it. Saying that, the sun has just come out so I'll back the van out and see how it reacts as the the sunlight moves round it.
i.e. 1) My van has no deadlocks
2) Despite paying Westfalia £300 for the alarm option, my van has no interior sensors
The combination of these two things makes my van about the easiest to steal things from in the country, not ideal for a camper holding all your belongings...
So I'm trying to make my own way of solving these, starting with the alarm. My idea is to have an interior sensor connected to an Arduino microcontroller board. When triggered, the Arduino would be programmed to open a relay connected to a wire that would then make the van think the door had been opened, setting the alarm off.
I have some Arduino boards and accessories knocking around as it's an occasional hobby of mine so I set about experimenting with ultrasonic distance sensors connected. I spent quite a while on these without much success, unfortunately they seemed to trigger false alarms often enough to be unusable and although I could programme most of these out on the Arduino, to get rid of them altogether took so much error correction that they only triggered about 6" away, no good for my purpose. So I turned to PIR sensors, and I know the issues with these, I was around in the 80s when there were car alarms with these that rapidly moved over to ultrasonics due to false alarms triggered by changes in temperature affecting the PIR, but I'm giving them a try. I have got hold of a couple of interior ultrasonic modules from scrap cars and I may give them a try too, but I have no documentation for the connections and I may have to use them on the analog inputs so I'm pressing on with PIR for now. The sensor (s) I use will be remote from the control unit in the final fitting and I will use 6 core burglar alarm wire to connect for futureproofing. The arduino can always be reprogrammed in situ.
So I quickly knocked up a prototype using tweaked code available off the shelf and a piezo buzzer playing a little tune when triggered. This will obviously be replaced by the relays in the finished unit.
I'm using a larger Uno board with all the headers for convenience while setting this up but the final unit will use a smaller Nano with soldered connections. This morning I tried it in the van to test for sensitivity, false alarms and positioning. It's being powered by a USB power pack for now.
I videoed it being triggered but couldn't get them to upload but it worked as soon as my head came through the drivers door or a hand was waved through one of the open rear windows. It stayed in place for an hour without any false alarms but I realise this isn't representative of real life use as it was in a garage with a constant temperature and no sun falling on it. Saying that, the sun has just come out so I'll back the van out and see how it reacts as the the sunlight moves round it.
