Automatic Garage Door Opener Works For Your Cat

February 17, 2015 by 14 Comments

Using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi to perform a task in the real world is certainly a project we’ve seen here before, and certainly most of these projects help to make up the nebulous “Internet of Things” that’s all the rage these days. Once in a while though, a project comes along that really catches our eye, as is the case with [Jamie’s] meticulously documented automatic garage door opener.

This garage door opener uses an ATMega328 to connect the internet to the garage door. A reed switch is installed which lets the device sense the position of the door, which is relayed back to the internet. [Jamie] wrote an Android app that can open and close the door and give the user the information on the door’s status. One really interesting feature is the ability to “crack” the garage door. This is done by triggering the garage door opener twice with a delay in between. From the video after the break we’d say this is how [Jamie’s] cat gets in and out.

We love seeing projects that are extremely well documented so that anyone who wants to make one can easily figure out how. Internet-connected garage door openers have been featured in other unique ways before too, but we’ve also seen ways to automatically open blinds or chicken coops!

RasPi Garage Door

A Raspberry Pi Garage Door Opener

February 15, 2015 by 32 Comments

We can never seem to get enough garage door hacks around here. [Tanner’s] project is the most recent entry into this category. He’s managed to hook up a Raspberry Pi to his garage door opener. This greatly extends his range to… well anywhere with an Internet connection.

His hack is relatively simple. He started with the garage door opener remote. He removed the momentary switch that was normally used to active the door. He bridged the electrical connection to create a circuit that was always closed. This meant that as long as the remote had power, the switch would be activated. Now all [Tanner] had to do was remove the battery and hook up the power connectors to his Raspberry Pi. Since the remote works on 3.3V and draws little current, he is able to power the remote directly from the Pi. The Pi just has to turn its pin high momentarily to activate the remote.

The ability to toggle the state of your garage door from anywhere in the world also comes with paranoia. [Tanner] wanted to be able to tell if the door is up, down, or stopped somewhere in the middle while he was away from home. He also wanted to use as little equipment as possible. Since he already had an IP camera in the garage, he decided to use computer vision to do the detection.

He printed off two large, black shapes onto ordinary white computer paper. One was taped to the top of the door and one to the bottom. A custom script runs on the Pi that grabs the latest image from the camera and uses OpenCV to detect the shapes. If both shapes are visible, then the script can assume the door is closed. Otherwise, it’s likely open. This makes it easier for [Tanner] to know if the door is opened or closed without having to check the camera himself.

Can’t get enough garage door hacks? Try these on for size. Continue reading “A Raspberry Pi Garage Door Opener” →

A Bluetooth Garage Door, Take Three

January 2, 2015 by 9 Comments

A few years ago, [Lou] came up with a pretty clever build to open his garage door with his phone. He simply took a Bluetooth headset, replaced the speaker with a transistor, and tied the transistor to a few wires coming out of his garage door opener. When the Bluetooth headset connected, the short beep coming from the speaker output opened the door.

The newest version of this build does away with the simple Bluetooth headset and replaces it with a Bluetooth 4.0 chip. The reason for this is that Apple and their walled garden of an App store would never allow a Samsung Bluetooth headset to be used with one of their iDevices.

The latest build is just about as simple as using a Bluetooth headset. A board that appears to use TI’s CC2540 chip is attached to the garage door opener with a few passives and a transistor. Pairing the new circuit with a phone is as simple as shorting a pair of pins, and the new iOS app does exactly what it should – opens a garage door at the press of a non-button.

While it’s not something that can be put together with scraps from a junk drawer, it’s still an extremely simple solution to opening a garage door with a phone. Video below.

Continue reading “A Bluetooth Garage Door, Take Three” →

Secret Attic Library Door

December 25, 2014 by 20 Comments

We have a pretty good guess where [Krizbleen] hides away any seasonal presents for his family: behind his shiny new secret library door. An experienced woodworker, [Krizbleen] was in the process of finishing the attic in his home when he decided to take advantage of the chimney’s otherwise annoying placement in front of his soon-to-be office. He built a false wall in front of the central chimney obstacle and placed a TV in the middle of the wall (directly in front of the chimney) flanked on either side by a bookcase.

If you touch the secret book or knock out the secret sequence, however, the right-side bookcase slides gently out of the way to reveal [Krizbleen’s] home office. Behind the scenes, a heavy duty linear actuator pushes or pulls the door as necessary, onto which [Krizbleen] expertly mounted the bookcase with some 2″ caster wheels. The actuator expects +24V or -24V to send it moving in one of its two directions, so the Arduino Uno needed a couple of relays to handle the voltage difference.

The effort spent here was immense, but the result is seamless. After borrowing a knock-detection script and hooking up a secondary access button concealed in a book, [Krizbleen] had the secret door he’d always wanted: albeit maybe a bit slow to open and close. You can see a video of its operation below.

Continue reading “Secret Attic Library Door” →

Garage Door Opener

Capacitive Garage Door Opener Hides Behind Your Dash

October 25, 2014 by 26 Comments

[Pyrow] wanted to upgrade his garage door opener remote. It worked just fine, but changing those tiny batteries out can be an inconvenience. Plus, the remote control was taking up valuable storage space and would always rattle around while driving. [Pyrow] decided to make use of an Omron E2K-F10MC2 capacitive touch sensor to fix these issues.

[Pyrow’s] circuit still makes use of the original remote control. He just added some of his own components to get it to do what he wanted. The circuit is powered by the car’s battery, so it never needs a battery replacement. The circuit is protected with a fuse and the power is regulated to prevent electrical spikes from burning up the original remote control. The actual circuit is pretty simple and uses mostly discrete components. It’s all soldered onto proto board to keep it together. He only had to solder to three places on the original remote control in order to provide power and simulate a button press.

Next, [Pyrow] took his dash apart. He used double-sided tape to attach the touch sensor to the back of the dash.  After securing the electronics in place with tape, he now has a working hidden garage door opener. Full schematics are available in the writeup linked above. Also, be sure to watch the demonstration video below.

Continue reading “Capacitive Garage Door Opener Hides Behind Your Dash” →

Doorbell

A 1920’s Doorbell Is Upgraded With 2010’s Technology

September 27, 2014 by 12 Comments

When you move into an old house, you are bound to have some home repairs in your future. [Ben] discovered this after moving into his home, built in 1929. The house had a mail slot that was in pretty bad shape. The slot was rusted and stuck open, it was covered in old nasty caulk, and it had a built-in doorbell that was no longer functional. [Ben] took it upon himself to fix it up.

The first thing on the agenda was to fix the doorbell. After removing the old one, [Ben] was able to expose the original cloth-insulated wiring. He managed to trace the wires back to his basement and, to his surprise, they seemed to be functional. He replaced the old doorbell button with a new momentary button and then hooked up a DIY doorbell using an XBee radio. [Ben] already had an XBee base station for his Raspberry Pi, so he was wrote a script that could send a notification to his phone whenever the doorbell was pushed.

Unfortunately, the old wiring just didn’t hold up. The push button only worked sporadically. [Ben] ended up purchasing an off the shelf wireless doorbell. He didn’t want to have to stick the included ugly plastic button onto the front of his house though, so [Ben] had to figure out how to trigger the new doorbell using the nice metallic button. He used the macro lens on his iPhone to follow the traces on the PCB until he was able to locate the correct points to trigger the doorbell. Then it was just a matter of a quick soldering job and he had a functional doorbell.

Once the electronics upgrades were complete, he moved on to fixing up the look of the mail slot. He had to remove the rust using a wire brush and sandpaper. Then he gave it a few coats of paint. He replaced the original natural insulation with some spray foam, and removed all the old nasty caulk. The final product looks as good as new and now includes a functional wireless doorbell.

We’re big fans of salvaging old-school home hardware. Another example that comes to mind is this set of door chimes with modernized driver.

Secret Outside Door

Secret Door Is Now Not So Secret

September 19, 2014 by 17 Comments

You’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t think secret doors are cool. They can come in many different forms, a built-in book case, a fake fireplace or even the rudimentary trap door under the rug. [oggfaba] has created a sweet secret door to enter his house. It is so well done there is no need for an architectural detail to hide it, it’s right there in plain sight.

To the unknowing onlooker, the rear of the house looks as any should with a window and water spigot. That water spigot is actually non-functional and acts as a door knob. The door-part of this secret door is just a standard fiberglass exterior door fitted with an electronic deadbolt and covered in exterior siding painted to match the rest of the house.

There are two methods to lock and unlock the door. There is a fob that can remotely unlock the installed deadbolt. There is also a keypad hidden under its own mini-secret door disguised as house siding material. There was no hacking involved with the deadbolt, keypad or remote. The Morning Industry QF-01SN deadbolt is available off the shelf with both unlocking options.

Continue reading “Secret Door Is Now Not So Secret” →