Noob here, trying to get early guidance on a project idea.
My neighborhood doesn't allow parking on the street at night. I'd like to be notified / reminded at night if my cars are not in the driveway 10pm. I've debated various approaches, based on what I've read here. Thoughts appreciated. It doesn't have to be super precise, just a reasonable guess that the car is not in the driveway. Goal is to avoid parking tickets. I'm ok with false positives.
I have two cars, parked in a driveway that is approximately 30 feet long the foot of the driveway is probably 40-50 feet from the house. I want to send an email or something if the cars are not in the driveway by a certain time. I think I should have sufficient wifi coverage from the foot of the driveway. I have hedges on either side of the driveway where I could hide something - but, the leaves might obscure signal sensors. I live in Northern California with year-round moderate climate - non-freezing temperatures and heavy rain is the worst of it.
Possible approaches? Infrared? Ultrasonic? Other proximity sensor approach?
I'm tired of getting parking tickets - any help appreciated.
A low-tech approach would be to set an alarm clock to go off at 9:30pm every night to remind you to check.
If it were me, I would set a second alarm for 9:45pm just in case I forgot about the first alarm
A high Tech approach would be to use multiple IR sensors. The bushes may/will obscure them but if you take the average of the ranges, then the higher average should indicate the cars are in the drive way.
A cheaper solution would be to maybe use laser beams and photoresistors, but with the same method of averaging the number of pins that go low. (High = not blocked, Low = blocked)
I would have thought the most convenient approach would be to just set a mental alarm if leaving the car somewhere that was only allowed to be temporary. Only slightly less convenient is setting an alarm to remind you to check the car was in an allowed location at the end of the day. At the cost of considerable time and money it would be possible to implement a solution that enabled the car to send you an alert if it was parked in the wrong place. I can't see how this would be worth the effort of implementing unless you were going to use the opportunity to implement theft detection/vehicle detection.
