Night Lights For The Dogs

For human use as well

After moving into our new home a while ago I had to add a Doggy door to the back door for the dogs to come and go as they please.  From the old house we managed to train them to go out and "do their business".  It works well and they adapted quickly.

After installing the doggy door in the new house I realised that they do not know the way to the back door in the dark yet, and we have a single step in the passage one of them fell down one night. So I use to leave the lounge lamp on at night so they could find their way and out into the dark.... while we were sleeping. No more getting up with them to take them out all hours of the night.  There must be a better way still.

So I purchased a Sonoff PIR2 motion sensor and installed in at sausage dog height from the ground outside our bedroom door.  Using some rules in OpenHAB and of course a Sonoff Bridge to convert the 433Mhz to Wifi. I can now trigger lights when they walk past it. It will only trigger lights when everyone is sleeping and all the other lights are off as well as between 22:00 and 06:00 hours only. So no lights are coming on during the day. As soon as they trigger it at night, the pathway to outdoor relief is lit up for them. Lighting up the passage, kitchen and outside garden light.  They have 5 min to do their thing and the lights will switch off again, so far 5 min has been more than enough for them.

As for the humans, well if we get up at night to get water or move down the passage, the lights come on for us to.  I only trigger minimal lights as to not disturb us in our sleep.  One of the best ideas yet. Simple yet so effective and one of the automation ideas that is used every day.