Vehicle detection loop in driveway

[readiescards]

Landscaping beginning at last.

Would like to be able to detect vehicles approaching our property.

 

What is suitable wiring to create a vehicle detection induction loop?  

 

Note the road way is not tarmac but a rough farm track made of chalk, stone and mud - how can I make an induction loop strong enough to withstand this installation?

 

Or is a another way more suitable e.g. ir camera, magnetic sensor, etc?

[Jeremy Harris]

I've fitted a doppler radar detector part way up our drive to trigger the CCTV to record.  Cheap and easy, but needs power.

 

Needless to say mine's home made, but it's based on a cheap microwave motion sensor module that switches power to a 433 MHz wireless transmitter, that has a pretty long range (I tested it and it works out to around 100m +).  There are almost certainly commercial units that use the same sort of technology.  The microwave doppler units are immune from false triggering from day time warm air gusts (something that plagued the PIR sensor I initially tried to use) and some have an adjustable sensitivity, so you can set the size of object, and range, that will cause them to trigger. 

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

Use an IR beam set at hight above cats/ other animals it detects people as well as cars. 

[Temp]

Companies that make automatic gates sell inductive loop detectors...

 

https://www.theelectricgateshop.co.uk/Vehicle-Inductive-Loop-Presence-Detector

 

http://easygates.co.uk/loop-detectors.asp

 

Cheaper one via Amazon..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sensors-Traffic-Inductive-Vehicle-Detector/dp/B0190JJU0C

But just one three star review (due to slow delivery).  

 

[Onoff]

Get the soldering iron out!

 

http://chemelec.com/Projects/Loop-Detector-1/Loop-Detector.htm

 

[readiescards]

Ordered this in the end:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B019V6XBTU

 

Ta for heads up @Temp

 

Will report back if any good.

 

 

Can I claim the VAT back on it?

[Temp]

Tricky one..

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction/vat-notice-708-buildings-and-construction

 

Edit: What's with this editor? I only put quotation tags around the bit I was quoting and it's enclosed the lot and added lots of white space.

 

Quote

13.6 Electrical and gas appliances

Most devices that are powered by electricity or gas are not building materials for VAT purposes, even if they are required to be incorporated in a building as a requirement of Building Regulations. Electrical and gas appliances are, however, building materials when they are:

• designed by the manufacturers to heat space or water (this includes cookers which are designed to have a dual purpose to heat the room or the building’s water)
• designed to provide ventilation, air cooling, air purification, or dust extraction
• door entry systems, waste disposal units, or machines for compacting waste, and are used in a building designed as a number of dwellings such as a block of flats
• burglar alarms, fire alarms, fire safety equipment, or devices for summoning aid in an emergency (but not phones or electric gates and barriers)
• lifts or hoists

 

So if it's part of your alarm system then yes. If it's a gate opener then no.

 

When I did my VAT reclaim the text I put on the spreadsheet didn't always exactly match what was written on the receipt. This was the case where I thought that what was written on the receipt was difficult to understand or open to misinterpretation.

 

Edited November 2, 2017 by jack
Formatting fixed

[Nickfromwales]

@Temp

If you highlight a particular section of text, then expand to encompass it, you'll be shown a 'quote' tag. Just press on that and the selected text will drop into the fresh editor page and be marked as quoted from said person . 

20 hours ago, Temp said:

Edit: What's with this editor?

So it looks like that. I think you have to do it individually rather than encompass a few in one go, if I understood what you did correctly. 

[Temp]

Yes that works ok but it's not what I did...

 

What I did was copy and past a block of text from another web site (I think it said it was inserting it as rich text).

I then manually added the quote, un-quote tags before and after the pasted text.

I then typed more text after the quoted block.

All looked ok so I clicked submit (or whatever) and it seemed to put my text inside the quoted block

I tried to edit it but it wouldn't let me select the text I typed.

 

I see jack has fixed it. How did he do that?

 

[Temp]

Test

 

Mary had a little lamb
Little lamb, little lamb
Mary had a little lamb
Its fleece was white as snow
And everywhere that Mary went
Mary went, Mary went
Everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go

This is text I typed after the end of quote tag.

[Temp]

Well that seems to have worked.