I'm looking to upgrade my driveway alerts and would this forum has such good advice I thought it would be a great place to ask for thoughts.
I have a very long driveway (about 1/2 a mile). Currently I have an Insteon motion detector set up at the end near the house. I also have a Nest camera looking out. This works ok but the Nest has lots of false positives (usually it mistakes changes in sunlight for movement) and the motion detector misses a lot of actual vehicles despite many different tries at calibrating it. Together they are passable but I'm looking for something better. The primary use will be to know when the school bus is coming down the driveway in the morning/afternoon.
I really like the Dakota DCPA-2500. I can put it further out on my driveway to allow for more advanced notice and it should have many fewer false positives since it detects metal and not motion.
I would like to attach the Dakota to my Insteon system like I would with a leak or open/close sensor (both of which I have and love). That way I can set it up to send me an email when it activates as well as activating a scene.
Is hooking this into my Insteon system as simple as attaching the Dakota receiver to an i/o Linc? or am I missing some steps?
Jackman: I have heard that the SMARTENIT EZSNRF/Dakota only works with the 3000 series Dakota and not the newer 2500s. You might double check before purchase.
Jackman: I have heard that the SMARTENIT EZSNRF/Dakota only works with the 3000 series Dakota and not the newer 2500s. You might double check before purchase.
Thanks for that tip Troyus. I'll keep that in mind. Like everything else read carefully before you invest.
Given that this was my first experience with both the Dakota 2500 and the I/O Linc it was fairly painless with the single biggest pain burying the probe and the wire in my extremely rocky soil.
One important thing to note is that where you wire into the Dakota 2500 receiver depends on the "zone" chosen. This zone corresponds to what tone you ended up selecting with the dip switches in the transmitter. It took me awhile to realize that by changing the tone I made it necessary to change the wiring as well.
I ended up wiring the "Sense" on the I/O Linc to the "NC" on channel 2 of the Dakota receiver. The "GND" on the I/O Linc went to the Common on channel 2 of the Dakota Receiver. I had expected it to go to NO (Normally Open). Anyway, it works fine set up this way.
I don't have the I/O Linc controlling anything yet (and may not in the future). Rather, I have it email me whenever it triggers. I did play around a bit with this and having the I/I Linc control other Insteon devices is as easy as having one switch control another.
Can someone tell me if the Dakota 2500 transmitter has an antenna that can be removed or relocated and what the range might be? I'm considering using one as a mailbox alert but need the 2500' range. My mailbox is about a 1000' away with some trees in the line of sight. I need to mount the antenna to the outside of the metal mailbox.
The Dakota DCPA-2500 has a 1/2 mile range, 1000' should not be a problem unless you have a thicket of trees. The antenna is not removable.
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The Dakota DCPA-2500 has a 1/2 mile range, 1000' should not be a problem unless you have a thicket of trees. The antenna is not removable.
Thanks for the reply. I'm handy with a soldering iron do you think it's possible to rework it to use a short length of coax to remote mount the antenna?
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My monitor detector Dakota DCPA-2500 has broken and I can't find a new one. I guess this model is out of stock, and I'm not sure if I should buy an upgraded version DCPA-4000 or look for smth else?
Good question and thanks for resurrecting this old thread MattRandalloK6. I've been using a Blink cam which does a good job of notifying with a range of about 400'. Combined with Alexa notifications it may make a suitable replacement.
I want to redecorate my garden and driveway and upgrade the security system. I googled the prices of blink cam and it's just 35$! Thanks a lot for the information.
Driveway Alarm
Posted - 07/20/2016 : 07:49:39 AM
