garage-rpy

A Garage Door Home Automation Controller using a Rasberry Pi with functionality exposed via a webpage or a raw socket. Put your garage door online!

#Huh? What? How? Why? Why not??!!!??! I dont want to spend $400 on some mostly pathetic garage door opener when what I really need is a whole new door besides the fact the new openers come with all sorts of vendor lock in (and shoveling your data online). I also just wanted to be able to open the garage on my way in from commuting home. It may seem quite ugly and simple, but more KISS would make the world a bit easier to navigate.

#Schematic This is essentially just a solid state relay connected in parallel with the standard open/close buttons and a 10-turn pot to detects where the door is physically located. I used a zero-crossing 2-amp (WAY overkill) solid state relay and some unknown 10-turn pot I found on amazon. Sorry for the utter lack of theory - feel free to contact me if you want some more info.

Schematic is saved in a format QElectroTech can open.

#Physical Installation

I have a few tools and tend to overbuild thing, but I am sure there are easier ways to attach this. Just be sure you install the pot/potentiometer in such a way that it can freely move across the entire cycle of the door opening and closing and do not create mechanical strains tha will eventually destroy stuff. I counted that my tensioner rod only rotated ~6 times, so I bought a 10-turn pot and slapped it in. Your milage may vary. The A2D frontend is generic enough that if you do something else it wont matter if you can provide a decent enough tranfer function in your ini file.

My hacked install of the pot into a 1980s era garage door tensioner rod.

#Software Installation This is all written in python with a smathering of CSS/JS/HTML.

EZ Install on rasbian

There is a simple install script for those on the debian based rasbian distro located in the scripts folder. You can use this via somethink like below.

	wget "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/npotts/garage-rpy/master/scripts/rasbian-ghetto-install.sh" -O inst-deps.sh && chmod +x inst-deps.sh && nano ./inst-deps.sh && ./inst-deps.sh

##Required Libaries

##Init file There is a sample debian compatable RC file that can be copied to /etc/init.d, altered, and added to the boot sequence via something like below.

	cp init/garage-rpy /etc/init.d/
	vim /etc/init.d/garage-rpy #edit some defaults
	update-rc.d garage-rpy defaults

#Configuration File Definitions If you want a full example, you should probably look at sample_config.ini for a more details. This is the configuration I have been using.

CherryPy Interface

There is a simple AJAX enabled web interface that is bundled to make it easier to deploy. This can be started by running

	sudo python cherrypy-garagepy.py

or by following the instructions given above to install the INIT file.

##Normative Web Interface

Screenshots of the web interface

CLI Apps

In the scripts folder, there are a couple scripts that may be handy to CLI gurus. Provided scripts are combination of curl and jq.

door-pos.sh - Displays a string that show where the door is and if it is open or not.
open-door.sh - Opens / closes door