Published May 10, 2016

Motion Sensor

A simple step approach to building a motion sensor that can send an alert to your phone/device. For MEGR 3171 at UNC Charlotte.

BeginnerProtip1 hour1,191

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Particle Photon

Story

Having a motion sensor to alert to motion in any room can be a very useful application.

Requirements:

-Particle Photon board (and photon inventor kit essentials such as:)

-breadboard

-Jumper Wires (about 6 needed here)

-1 kOhm resistor

-A LED

-A PIR Sensor

-Right Angle Connector-Through-3-Hole-Pin (JST) (for the PIR sensor connection the breadboard)

Circuit work below:

Design the circuit as show below. The LED light is useful because it shows that the motion sensor is working. No matter the location of the microcontroller on the breadboard, the wiring is the same.

from github

Here is a general picture of the set up:

Particle layout

Go to Particle Build Dashboard and enter the attached code. This should prove that the motion sensor detects motion. The LED light should flash red as an indicator. I turned down the lights to show the response.

Trial run to see if code works

Then you set up your Pushover account.

Pushover account set up

Download the Pushover app and sign up your phone. Register your application to get an API token.

Pushover (2)

Test it to see if the Pushover app is working on your phone. Now you are ready for the final touches.

Go to IFTTT.com and set up your recipe. Connect your Particle account *and* your Pushover account to your IFTTT account. You do this though the channel tab.

Go to Create Recipe:

IFTTT: Particle

1) Go to Particle channel and select it for THIS.

2) Choose Event Published

3) In this code, the published event is called:

designingiot/s15/motion so write this as the published event. You can go manually in your code in the Particle Dashboard with any title/label by the Particle.publish. The Events Contents is optional in this code, so just leave it blank. Select the name of your Photon device.

IFTTT particle

4) Select Create Trigger.

5) THEN would be the Pushover channel and it will ask you to select notification alert. There is the option of high priority notification and that may be more ideal for the rate of alerts from the PIR sensor.

Final Recipe

Here is a demonstration:

Motion Sensor Code

int inputPin = D0;              // choose the input pin (for PIR sensor)
int ledPin = D1;                // LED Pin
int pirState = LOW;             // we start, assuming no motion detected
int val = 0;                    // variable for reading the pin status

int calibrateTime = 10000;      // wait for the thingy to calibrate

void setup()
{
  pinMode( ledPin, OUTPUT );
  pinMode(inputPin, INPUT);     // declare sensor as input
}

void loop()
{

  // if the sensor is calibrated
  if ( calibrated() )
  {
  // get the data from the sensor
    readTheSensor();

    // report it out, if the state has changed
    reportTheData();
  }
}

void readTheSensor() {
  val = digitalRead(inputPin);
}

bool calibrated() {
  return millis() - calibrateTime > 0;
}

void reportTheData() {

  // if the sensor reads high
  // or there is now motion
  if (val == HIGH) {

    // the current state is no motion
    // i.e. it's just changed
    // announce this change by publishing an eent
    if (pirState == LOW) {
      // we have just turned on
      Particle.publish("designingiot/s15/motion");
      // Update the current state
      pirState = HIGH;
      setLED( pirState );
    }
  } else {
    if (pirState == HIGH) {
      // we have just turned of
      // Update the current state
      pirState = LOW;
      setLED( pirState );
    }
  }
}

void setLED( int state )
{
  digitalWrite( ledPin, state );
}