HOSMART 1/4 Mile Rechargable Driveway Alarm Wireless Sensor System & Driveway Sensor Alert System Weatherproof Security Outdoor Motion Sensor & Detector

I purchased this for the purpose of adding to the security of the country home where my Parents live.They have a long drive, and as such the effective range was critical.Other important factors was that the detector be discrete, and the battery life extensive.This driveway alarm ticks all those boxes, though honestly to early to tell with regard to battery life.Set up was simple, mounting was easy, and the mount provided robust and easily adjustable.The range and signal strength is excellent, which is was the most important feature.Last but not least, colour, which was a nice touch. Unlike the bright white of others I considered.Given where this was placed it the colour is near perfect, rendering the unit hard to notice.Overall this is an excellent driveway alarm.

I bought 3 kits of these sensors and receivers, with widely varying degrees of success.My initial installation included two sensors and a receiver. (Devices in this kit were marked “P”; see more comments about that, below.) The build quality feels cheap and the alarm tones are limited and cheesy… but, in my application, they worked as advertised. One sensor has a clear line of sight out of trees to the driveway; 80metres from the receiver. The other is within my yard; 40m from the receiver. I would not be surprised if the actual working range could be much longer. I positioned the receiver in the hallway of my home and, at its loudest setting, it can easily be heard whilst working from home or from any bedroom.When looking to expand the system to add three more sensors and two more receivers, I ordered two further kits.One kit arrived marked with the “P” and integrated seamlessly with the previous order.The second additional kit did not have the “P” marking and differences appeared subtle… but turned out to be significant. These non-“P” devices appear to be a newer specification. The power to the receiver is now via a USB-C cable (previously USB-mini-B) but, unlike the previous spec, a 240V-USB power adapter is no longer included; sensors are different, too - the rechargeable battery is no longer included so you’ll need to supply your own AAs. (The electronics industry version of “shrinkflation”?!) The sensor casing has a vaguely hood-esque shape rather than a distinct actual hood. (Most of the Amazon product listing photos show the new style now, with no hood, but the set of photos currently used in the Product Description section still shows the older hood design - next to the “Excellent Quality” paragraph where the hood is called a “sunshade”.) The switches inside the sensors (to select the channel and sensitivity) appeared to function as per the older (“P”) style. Crucially, for me, these units did not function at all out of the box; they did not work with each other, nor in any configuration with the “P” devices. Lights on the receiver did not stay on as they had with the older versions. I wrote to the manufacturer at the email address supplied within the boxes but, now 15 days later, I have yet to receive a reply. I recognise that there is a pairings procedure that I could have tried but I had no confidence that the newer devices were even functional at all, so I was reluctant to go to all the effort that would have been required to dismount and disassemble the installed and functional devices in the hopes I could get anything (at all!) to work afterwards. I decided to live with the 3 sensors and 2 receivers that were working well enough and returned the 2 sensors and receiver back to Amazon.The original kit has been working here now for 3 months. It is not 100% reliable but, for me, much better than nothing. There are false positives - the alarm triggers for no apparent reason - and there are frequent occasions when my driveway alarm does not trigger at all… but fortunately the one in the yard is there to cover. (It just happened exactly whilst typing this! The postman’s van was just detected in the yard but did not trigger the driveway alarm neither whilst entering nor exiting.) Note that all sensors were fully charged before installing them and the 2 older sensors were recharged at the same time I installed the third one, two weeks ago. I plan to increase the sensitivity of the driveway alarm but fear the increase in false positives due to cows in the field opposite. The third (newer but still “P”) sensor works well from inside an outbuilding, 40m away from the house. This is actually quite impressive given that I have yet to find a useful way to get wifi or mobile phone signal into that thick-walled, tin-roofed building.I like the tan colour of the sensors; it is practically invisible attached to a tree and also matches pressure-treated timber really well. I prefer the subtle design rather than the toy-ish “owl” design of competitors. The receivers can be set to be loud enough to wake me up at night time. I like that the receivers are powered from the mains and also have an internal battery backup, so you could spend the afternoon in the garden/greehouse/bath and still be alerted to arrivals. In use, the receivers don’t need to be available or even visible, so it is handy that they can be attached to a wall (although it is then a shame that the power cable is attached to the top of the device rather than the bottom).I share many gripes with other reviewers. I don’t want the sensor to flash a red light when triggered, so am restricted to using only 2 channels and, therefore, don’t see a useful way to expand the system in such a way that the location of the triggering sensor could be easily identified by its chime. It is also a shame that the receiver (or an optional accessory hub?) is not able to link to a smart home and thus trigger all kinds of automations. I am a minor-league geek and am aware that there may be a plug-in to the Homebridge (therefore also HOOBS?) project that could integrate sensors into a smart home… but I have yet to find the time to investigate this possibility. It is also a frustration that the chimes are solely given by the selection of the 4 channels (noting that only 2 of which can be used without the red light) - even the 15 quid doorbell at my old house had 38 user-selectable chimes. The William Tell Overture never sounded quite this awful or repetitive. If you only need one driveway sensor, 4 channels gives some choice of indicator and chime but, given the effective range of the product and the potential suitability to large properties, there will be many who would have appreciated being able to zone areas more effectively.Finally, the build quality. There is nothing about the product in-hand that feels especially well-built. I suspect my driveway sensor is already in terminal decline.(Ha! As I skim-read this back, the driveway alarm went off. Nobody there!)

I bought this alarm to warm me when someone is walking on my driveway and approaching our front door.I am very happy to say that it is working great, I set it up on the lowest sensitivity as I want to detect people up to 4 meters of the sensor maximum and so far I have never had any false alarm by cats or other small animals. I installed it around 1 meters above ground level. It is great to be able to select the sensitivity/detection distance, very few systems allow you to do this. I also like that the receiver works on both batteries and plugged in, this allowed me to walk with the receiver in my hand to test the position of the sensor so I could do the whole installation on my own. There are 4 channels on the receiver, each with a different alarm tone so you can know immediately which sensor triggered the alarm. You can set the channel on the sensor and the first two will make the sensor light up dimly when triggered while when set to one of the last two channels, no light will come up so nobody knows that they have triggered an alarm. The sensor unit is well protected against the weather with seals and hood and the battery should easily last a year from what I read. There is a sealed plug at the bottom to charge the battery from any mobile phone power bank so I won’t need to remove the sensor to charge it in a year time which is great. I also like the color of the sensor, brown, which blend well with my wooden fence, I saw that it is possible to get a dark green sensor too to blend with vegetation. I located the receiver 20 meters from the sensor with several brick walls in between and it is working fine. So far I am happy with this alarm, I should have bought one years ago!

I purchased one of these driveway alarms last year and have been very pleased with it. Needing to expand both base station and sensors I purchased another set. In the interim there have been numerous design changes to the unit which, in my opinion, cheapen the product. In fact, in my case, the unit had to be returned because it was not compatible with my existing unit (it should be according to the seller). I tried to contact aftersales before returning but gave up due to no reply (still no reply after a week).The original units sensor had a rechargeable battery within....now requires AA batteries x4. As a result, the new sensor has increased in size significantly and is no longer supplied with the separate sun hood/shield.I believe the design changes simply take cost out of production whilst at the same time, increasing the cost of the new unit to the customer. Not shrinkflation but a similar slight of hand!I have now purchased a competitors unit which is much better value and functions just as well.

I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this PIR and radio base station. Although the PIR doesn't look very impressive it seems well made. I have wired the base station to an ESP32 device that communicates movement alerts to my mobile phone. I can turn off the alerts or turn them on to prevent them getting annoying, which is essential if you don't want to be alerted to every movement in the area they are placed. I have turned the sound down on the base station so that I am alerted only via the mobile. It works very well. It is much more reliable than using a camera to try and detect movement, cameras tend to detect shadows and any lighting change as well as real human movement. Adding the mobile capability only costs a few pounds. So all in all it has been very cost effective to do it this way. Using wireless PIRs has the advantage that I can add new ones easily and re-site them.