NEW: View all 8 parts of this project on one page!!
PART 1 – Introduction
The inspiration for this project was simple. My daughter has a habit of forgetting her house key, and we’ve had mixed results with the wireless garage door opener keypad. Time for a new solution. Plus, it’s a great excuse to play with electronics!!! She has an iPhone and it never leaves her side, so that seemed like a reasonable interface to use. Plus, if I network attached it, I could do some other nifty things like control it from the office.
It would not be prudent to proceed without at least looking to see how others had solved this problem either with commercial solutions, or hacks. But, in all fairness, we know where this is going because if I found something I liked, there wouldn’t be a blog entry here 
Commerical solutions:
- Crafstman Assurelink – Didn’t want to swap out my garage door opener.
- Insteon opener from SmartHome – not looking to integrate Insteon just yet. Nice solution, just a little expensive. Not directly compatible with iPhone (so after getting it, I’d still have work to do).
Hacker solutions:
- mydooropener.com – uses an Arduino. When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Plus it was wired ethernet instead of wifi.
- wwPCRemote.com – requires a PC and USB connection. Uses a hacked handheld garage door opener remote. Not what I’m looking for.
- Hackaday.com – several, but some were bluetooth, some were ethernet, one required a dedicated android phone. Nothing there really grabbed me as the solution for me.
I’m sure these are fine solutions for some, but they just didn’t meet my needs. I would not impugn another hacker’s work.
My requirements:
- iPhone compatible
- Can detect current garage door status
- Expandable, I have 2 bays, though I really only use 1 for a car
- Inexpensive
- Alerting if garage door is open for longer than X minutes
- LED indicators for testing/troubleshooting
- Interfaces with existing garage door
I had recently run across a Roving Networks RN-XV module which is designed to be a drop in replacement for an XBee. It features 8 digital general purpose IO pins, wi-fi with adhoc setup (no serial setup required!!) and even has analog sensor inputs. Round peg + round hole = solution!!!
After reviewing the spec sheet, I came up with this initial sketch:
Garage door prototype sketch
Next up, Part 2 – the microcontroller.
[...] from d’innovative wanted a way to control his garage door remotely. Have a look at his Wifi Garage Door Opener Project Build for some inspiration when you are ready to build yours. If you are looking for some other options [...]
[...] from d’innovative wanted a way to control his garage door remotely. Have a look at his Wifi Garage Door Opener Project Build for some inspiration when you are ready to build yours. If you are looking for some other options [...]
[...] from d’innovative wanted a way to control his garage door remotely. Have a look at his Wifi Garage Door Opener Project Build for some inspiration when you are ready to build yours. If you are looking for some other options [...]
[...] from d’innovative wanted a way to control his garage door remotely. Have a look at his Wifi Garage Door Opener Project Build for some inspiration when you are ready to build yours. If you are looking for some other options [...]
[...] from d’innovative wanted a way to control his garage door remotely. Have a look at his Wifi Garage Door Opener Project Build for some inspiration when you are ready to build yours. If you are looking for some other options [...]
“requires a PC and USB connection. Uses a hacked handheld garage door opener remote. Meh.”
“I would not impugn another hacker’s work.”
I think you just did that.
That was not what I intended, but I agree that it can be read that way. I’ll update…
[...] from d’innovative wanted a way to control his garage door remotely. Have a look at his Wifi Garage Door Opener Project Build for some inspiration when you are ready to build yours. If you are looking for some other options [...]
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
Hi my friend, just for say Great Work!. btw: the link to Roving Networks RN-XV is bad.
Fixed! thanks
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
[...] has a habit of forgetting to take a house key along with her, so he was looking for a way to make accessing the house easier in a pinch. He had tried wireless garage door keypads in the past, but their performance was [...]
Thanks for posting, and giving me the incentive to continue working on my garage door monitor. I had not heard of the XBee replacement, just ordered one and a regulated breakout board, will use that instead of the Arduino + XBee that I was going to use.
During the summer I purchased an old camera (http://www.flickr.com/photos/afulki/6162807434/sizes/l/in/photostream/) and have removed the battery, capacitor and bulb from the attached flash unit, plenty of space for the XBee, regulated power and an Ultra Bright Blue LED (shines through the diffuser). This sits in the front room and lights up when the garage door is open (or will when I finish the sensor and server code). Anyway I’m rambling, will write it up and post on my site when I finish it hopefully by the end of the month.
[...] Here is the original post: http://www.dinnovative.com/?p=163 [...]
Great project and awesome instructions – I’ve learned a lot. Have you had any luck using the analog sensors on the RN-XV? I’ve been using a TMP36 sensor but can’t seem to get any consistent readings back
Take a look at Scott Bjornsen’s comments. He tried the same thing and ran into some issues with some built-in resistor divider networks on the XV.
http://bjornsenfamily.com/blog/?p=69
He chose to do it with a hardware modification. Given that you know the temperature profile and the resistor values (from the datasheet, and with empirical observation), I would imagine you could do it in software just as easily.
tod
Ahhh – thanks! I kept pouring over the manual thinking I was missing some setting. I even tried tying one of the analog pins to ground hoping to at least read a 0 value but nothing worked. I’ll look at it again and see if I can figure it out. Can’t wait to get this thing off the breadboard and into my garage! Right now I just have it controlling a lamp in my living room.
[...] Xbee module I picked up courtesy of a Hack A Day article about a guy that used it to control his garage door over WiFi. He had a pretty good walk through of what he did and I liked that he didn’t use the [...]