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Hi,

I have a setup where a Intertechno motion detector should communicate via Tellstick (Duo) with my home automation application which should then turn on a lamp (also Intertechno). The setting works fine except that it needs 2-3 seconds for the lamp to turn on. This is a not acceptable, uncomfortable delay.

Why the delay? (my guess at least...)

The Intertechno motion detector sends its signal 2-3 seconds to be sure the receiver (here the TellStick Duo) received it properly. This behavior cannot be changed and it might be reasonable for the motion detector sender to send its signal a few times for redundancy reasons.

While this time, i.e., while the Tellstick Duo is receiving the signals from the motion detector, it is unable to SIMULTANEOUSLY send commands to the lamp. These commands to turn the lamp on are queued and get sent right after the motion detector stops sending its signals to the Tellstick (which unfortunately is the 2-3 seconds delay).

If this is the reason - what would you suggest me in order to solve the problem?

My first idea would be to use a second Tellstick (the regular one, NOT the Duo) that just is able to SEND signals. This way I could simultaneously send and receive Intertechno commands.
=> My question: Can I connect a second Tellstick to my raspberry pi? How would I address each one of them in my C program? Could they be distinguished at the c code level at all?? I could not find any documentation regarding this issue yet.

I guess the fall back would be to use a second raspberry just for sending signals and have the raspberries communicate with each other, but this would of course be my least preferred option.

Any help / suggestions are welcome! Thank you!

Chris

I guess this is a "system limitation", you cannot send and transmit at the same time, as this will cause the code to be disturbed and you end up with a non responsive receiver.

Do you think I can simultaneously send via a second Tellstick with a different house code w/o disrupting anything? Or would I be required to switch to 833Mhz motion detector sensors instead?

A different transmitter with a different house code would not make any difference. The code will still be garbled (from two different transmitters) and the receiver will not be able to decode the signal.

I think I get the point. In order to prevent the motion sensor to power off the lamp I would then need two switches in parallel for the lamp, one triggered directly and immediately by the motion sensor, the other parallel triggered with the mentioned delay by the tellstick. This seems to be the only alternative if I don't want to switch to another frequency for the sensors. Does this make sense?

Why two swiches? Just use the motion sensor to control the lamp and if you have some sort of alarm on your pi then it would get triggered as well when the motion sensor goes off..Just keep the lamp and the motion sensor on the same house kode and create a remote in your tellstick to control the lamp manually when you want to..

I originally wanted to decouple the motion sensor and the lamp to d advanced calculations in my raspberry. But roughly I want the following:

The specification is:
- 1x tellstick, 1x lamp, 1x motion sensor, 1x manual switch

1. when entering the room as detected by the motion sensor, turn lamp on
2. when in the room and pressing the manual switch, increment a timeout by adding PLUS 15 minutes each time pressing ON
3. when pressing OFF turn the lamp off
4. when leaving the room, make sure the light stays on for n*15 Minutes (n >= 1)

The problem is that the motion sensor when speaking directly to the lamp is turning it off. I currently detect this as well with the tellstick/raspberry turning it on again if
the motion sensor (or someone else) turn the lamp off before n*15 Minutes passed. But this is ugly as the lamp goes off again for 2-3 seconds before the tellstick can turn it
on again.

So the only solution I can see is in addition to the switch (a) a second parallel switch (b) so that the lamp is on iff ((motion sensor turns it on) OR (raspberry wants to leave it on for n*15 Minutes)).

The raspberry/tellstick will then control the (b) switch on a different house code, and the motion sensor speaks directly to switch (a). As long as the motion sensor will not shut down the lamp before the delay of 2-3 seconds passed, everything should work fine as the raspberry/tellstick will have turned switch (b) on in the mean time.

Does this make sense now? Any other suggestions?

delphino wrote: Does this make sense now? Any other suggestions?

This sounds like something that Automagically almost can handle, you might want to check it out.

http://www.telldus.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=25
http://automagically.weebly.com/home-automation.html
http://automagically.wikia.com/wiki/Automagically_Wiki

The one thing I cannot say works out-of-the-box is the "increment a timeout by adding PLUS 15 minutes each time pressing ON". But there might be some tweaks to handle also this - otherwise if you have python knowledge, you can extend it...
https://bitbucket.org/davka003/automagically/

The setup in Automagically:
- The lamp configured to listen to both from the motion sensor and the switch
- 2 x "Raw tellstick devices" (the motion sensor and the switch)
- 1 x "Timer device" (sending OFF) at expiry
- 2 x Device command signal that takes the input from motion sensor and the switch performs ON on the timer device

This will reset the timer to e.g. 15 min every time the motion sensor or the the switch is pressed.

You might want to ask in the Automagically section in this forum if someone is bright enough to make Automagically do what you want.

/Marcus