My plan was originally to use an Electric Imp for this project, but my knowledge of electronics and pcb design was limited at the time I started this, so it ended up with a bad looking setup on a breadboard. It worked fine for the few months I used it, but it was not really meant to look like that, and it was just hacked together with different connectors and was generally a mess.
At the same time I had problems with android doing blinkup, so I ended up with a Spark Core instead… This turned out to be an even more troubled adventure, and the relay board I ordered for it also got delayed, while needing a much bigger power supply for it than I had used for my Electric Imp so far…
So… I ended up going back to my Electric Imp again, and started to learn more about pcb design. I have now designed multiple pcb’s, only gotten a few fabricated, but at some point I will make this project as a proper pcb with all components on the same board.
So here is my more proper temporary setup.
It isn’t much, only a transistor, a relay, diode, resistor, and a dc to dc step down, but it does the job!
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I also made a garage door control. I thought it would be really important to know if the door was open, closed, or ajar (halfway). I added a limit switch at both ends. When I log into my website with a ‘code’, it shows the switch status, and displays the door button.
I based mine similar to the other instructables, except that I use my website, not an app.
I can try to post some info if interested.
It uses PHP and JQuery.
Thank you for the offer, but I already got an extensive php site which controls all of my different ‘nodes’.
The next upgrade to this will actually be an absolute positioning system.
And here is the first prototype of the positioning system.
Could you explain what you have going on there? My system uses two sensors for up and down… I assume you will know exactly where it is with this?
Mine also got a sensor on each end to tell it when to stop, but I want the imp to know where the door is, and if it moves in the right direction.
So far I still use the original circuit to drive the door, and it works so it will move at the opposite direction for each “press”. But if I have told the door to go up, and I want it further up, it will go down if I tell it to move again. Like this the imp would detect it pretty fast, and be able to stop it, and tell it to move again. This time it will then go up instead of down, and it will then move up to the position I set it to move to and stop there.
Or that is at least my idea to try to make…
Wow … you are really getting into it. Interesting to know absolute position.
My biggest concern is when we leave home and my wife asks, “did you shut the garage door?”, and I say, “I though you shut it … hmm maybe I shut it???” We just enter the code on my web page and see if it’s opened or closed, and are able to push the button.
Also, as the other instructables do, if the door moves off of the closed switch, we can get a text message informing us of that. I can enable or disable that alarm. And I can assign up to 3 different access codes, so I can give my neighbor a code to use if they need to check on something in my house.
What ever happened to the days when we would get out of our car and manually open the garage door? Imp = lazy ? oh well, it’s fun anyhow.
I am also going to add more sensors so it can close the door on its own depending on weather conditions and such.
A slot for the Imp and some holes got added…
And it’s aliiiiive!
