garage

30 Articles

Parking Assistant Helps Back Up The Car Without Going Too Far

September 27, 2020 by 24 Comments

Sure, [Ty Palowski] could have just hung a tennis ball from the ceiling, but that would mean getting on a ladder, testing the studfinder on himself before locating a ceiling joist, and so on. Bo-ring. Now that he finally has a garage, he’s not going to fill it with junk, no! He’s going to park a big ol’ Jeep in it. Backwards.

The previous owner was kind enough to leave a workbench in the rear of the garage, which [Ty] has already made his own. To make sure that he never hits the workbench while backing into the garage, [Ty] made an adorable stoplight to help gauge the distance to it. Green mean’s he’s good, yellow means he should be braking, and red of course means stop in the name of power tools.

Inside the light is an Arduino Nano, which reads from the ultrasonic sensor mounted underneath the enclosure and lights up the appropriate LED depending on the car’s distance. All [Ty] has to do is set the distance that makes the red light come on, which he can do with the rotary encoder on the side and confirm on the OLED. The distance for yellow and green are automatically set from red — the yellow range begins 24″ past red, and green is another 48″ past yellow. Floor it past the break to watch the build video.

The humble North American traffic signal is widely recognized, so it’s a good approach for all kinds of applications. Teach your children well: start them young with a visual indicator of when it’s okay to get out of bed in the morning.

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Garage Distance Sensor Kicks Tennis Ball To Curb

August 7, 2017 by 24 Comments

Those with small garages might be familiar with the method of hanging a tennis ball from a ceiling to make sure they don’t hit the back wall with their car. If the car isn’t in the garage, though, the tennis ball dangling from a string tends to get in the way. To alleviate this problem, [asaucet] created a distance sensor that can tell him when his car is the perfect distance from the garage wall.

At the heart of the distance sensor is an HC-SR04 ultrasonic rangefinder and a PIC16F88 microcontroller. [asaucet] uses a set of four LEDs to alert the driver how close they are to the garage wall. [asaucet] also goes into great detail about how to use an LCD with this microcontroller for setting up the project, and the amount of detail should be enough to get anyone started on a similar project.

While this isn’t a new idea, the details that [asaucet] goes into in setting up the microcontroller, using the distance sensor, and using an LCD are definitely worth looking into. Even without this exact application in mind, you’re sure to find some helpful information on the project page.

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LiftLocker Keeps Your Lift Safe From Attacking Garage Doors

February 2, 2017 by 54 Comments

Car lifts used to be a tool reserved for professional mechanics. Times are a-changing though. With the advent of reasonably priced four-post hydraulic lifts, more and more shade tree mechanics are joining the five-foot high club. Installing a lift in a home garage creates a few hazards, though. What happens when a family remotely opens the garage door while there is a car up on the lift? Garage door and lifted vehicle will meet – with expensive and/or dangerous results. [Joe Auman] saw this problem coming a mile away. He built the LiftLocker to make sure it never happens to him.

At its core, LiftLocker is a set of switched extension cords. Two cast-aluminum boxes hide the electronics. One box plugs in-line with the lift. The other box plugs in-line with the garage door opener. Each box includes a Sparkfun Redboard Arduino compatible, an RFM22 433 MHz Radio, and a relay. Input comes from a security system magnetic reed-switch. Both boxes are identical in hardware and code.

Operation is simple. One box and reed switch goes on the lift, the other on the garage door. If the lift is going up, its reed switch will open. The lift’s Arduino detects this and commands its RFM22 to send a signal to the other box on the garage door. Upon receiving this signal, the garage door controller will open its relay, disconnecting power to the garage door opener. Communication is two-way, so if the Lift controller doesn’t hear an ACK message from the garage door controller, everything will shut down. Click past the break to see the system in action.

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Open Your Garage Door With Your Smartphone

January 31, 2017 by 42 Comments

The eternal enemy of [James Puderer]’s pockets is anything that isn’t his smartphone. When the apartment building he resides in added a garage door, the forces of evil gained another ally in the form of a garage door opener. So, he dealt with the insult by rigging up a Raspberry Pi to act as a relay between the opener and his phone.

The crux of the setup is Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) — a Google service that allows messages to be sent to devices that generally have dynamic IP addresses, as well as the capacity to send messages upstream, in this case from [Puderer]’s cell phone to his Raspberry Pi. After whipping up an app — functionally a button widget — that sends the command to open the door over FCM, he set up the Pi in a storage locker near the garage door and was able to fish a cable with both ethernet and power to it. A script running on the Pi triggers the garage door opener when it receives the FCM message and — presto — open sesame.

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Garage Door Opener Logs To Google Drive

January 15, 2017 by 12 Comments

A garage door opener is a pretty classic hack around these parts. IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, smartphone controlled, web interfaces — we’ve seen it all.  But if you want to keep track of people going in and out, you need some way of logging what’s happening. You could go ahead and roll up your own SQL based solution, tied into a custom web page. But there’s an easier way; you can build a garage door opener that logs events to Google Drive.

[WhiskeyTangoHotel] was looking for an ESP8266 project, and a garage door opener seemed just the ticket. It’s simple enough to code up, and control over WiFi comes in handy. Interfacing with the garage door was simple enough — the existing opener uses a simple push button, which is easily controlled by wiring up a relay to do the job. Logging is as simple as having the ESP8266 send requests to IFTTT which is set up to make posts to a Google Sheet with status updates.

The project is fairly basic, but there’s room for expansion. By using separate Maker Channel triggers on IFTTT, different users of the garage door could be tracked. It would also be easy to add some limit switches or other sensors to detect the door’s position, so it can be determined whether the door was opened or closed.

There’s always another take on the garage door opener — check out this hack that opens the garage door in response to flashing headlights.

Path To Craftsmanship: The Art Of Throwing It Away

May 31, 2016 by 153 Comments

Some hackers build sharp, mildly toxic nests of parts, components, and thrifty finds around themselves. These nests, while not comfortable, are certainly comforting. They allow the hacker’s psyche to inhabit a locale as chaotic as their minds. Within these walls of stuff and clutter, stunning hacks pour out amid a small cloud of cursing. This article is not for them.

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/an-analog-life-remembering-jim-williams/
Very few of us can actually function in a workplace such like that of the venerable Jim Williams (photo from linked article). Thanks to the commenters for mentioning him in the previous article.

For the rest of us, clutter is a Zen destroying, seemingly unconquerable, monster that taunts our poor discipline and organizational skill from the dark corner of our minds. However, there is an easy solution that is oft overlooked. Somewhat obviously, most organization problems can be solved by simply not having things to organize.

It’s taken me a very long time to realize the source of my clutter woes. My first tactic was to blame myself for my inability to keep up with the mess. A more superior human would certainly be able to use their effortless discipline to keep a space organized. However, the clutter was a symptom of a problem completely separate from my actual ability to keep a space clean.

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Fingerprint Garage Door Won’t Open Every Time A Neighbor Microwaves A Burrito

March 16, 2016 by 18 Comments

With three kids, including himself, [Dave] faced the very real likelihood of someone absent-mindedly leaving the garage door open and being robbed blind. Rather than installing some plebeian solution, he compiled a feature list. And what a feature list it is!

The garage door needed to notify him of its status with strategically placed LEDs around the house, and give him full control on his devices. He wanted to open and close it using his existing key-code entry system. Lastly, it would be extra-cool if he could add some biometrics to it; in this case, a fingerprint sensor.

The core hardware is the staple Arduino augmented with a fingerprint module, a touch screen, some vitamins, and a WiFi break-out. He also worked up some casings in tinkercad: one for the indoor hardware, another with a flip cover for the outdoor fingerprint scanner.

We think [Dave] has accomplished what he set out to. We can just picture the would-be-thief staring at the finger print scanner and moving their operation one house over where the world is simpler. Video after the break.

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