prisma seal
I have an RF dog fence controller (wire loop acts as a fence that emits an RF signal that the pets collar will react too when it gets near) that I want to monitor with home assistant. The controller has no external signal features; I need to put my hacker hat on, which I'm excited to do!
Two things happen when the controller detects the fence is open (i.e., wire cut or disconnected):
- The "loop" status indicator LED will turn off - LED driven from PIC MCU IO pin
- A piezo buzzer make a lame little alarm sound - both leads of piezeo driven directly from the PIC MCU IO pins
What I'd like to do is utilize a z-wave (preferably) sensing module and read/sense the piezo signal to determine when the fence is open (open like a circuit, not like a gate). I would also sense the 5VDC power on the controller to know when it's powered on. The combination of POWER ON and PIEZEO ON indicates emergency state that I care about.
I'm writing here because while I have a concept in my head of how to accomplish this, I've never done it and I'm not real strong with electronics.
Some questions I have bouncing around in my head:
- Do I need to worry about sensing the signals directly from the controller MCU pins? Is an optoisolator or some other driver circuitry needed? I'm not driving a high current (e.g., mechanical relay) so I'm inclined to think not
- Are there z-wave modules out there that can be powered by 5VDC (or 12VAC - what comes into the controller unit)
- If my z-wave module is powered by the controller unit, do I need to worry about any kind of grounding issues? I think not, but not sure
And the big question: Does my basic plan seem sound or would you guys/gals handle this a different way?
