Opening a door garage with a Particle Photon is no big deal, but the big deal is to know if it has been closed or opened in your absence. Most garage doors have a system that helps them detect the current status of door i.e. whether it is open or close. However, when you wish to get this acknowledged with a particle device, you can do things easily with ControlEverything board. Just go out and check if your door opener has any kind of reed switch or not.
In case, these are absent you can always take the motor apart and find the little close open switch. The maker of this project, went to a number of Garage door repair parts sites. The door opening and closing switch interacts with the garage door opener logic board and lets it know when to cease closing or opening function. You can plug the opener back in and see it functioning.
Next, measure the voltage signal with a correctly set multimeter and see reading for every contact point when it opens and closes. You will see that the closed contacts have s table value while the opening range of readings varies to higher degree, it may go from 1.8mV – 100mV. So, you can say that the CE board treats the readings as 0 or 1 logic.
While hooking it up, you can splice it into Grey, Brown, and Yellow wire and hook those with input 1, 2, and GND. Now, with the help of Particle Build IDE you can locate the library offered by CE and then flash it to the device. Go to IFTTT and set up some recipes through SMS while the inputs 1 or 2 respond to “On” status. From this point, you can modify the recipes that tell you “Garage Door Is Open” or “Garage Door is Closed” through SMS. Moving a step further, you can utilize iOS GPS recipe in the IFTTT so that when you are away from your home for a specific distance to toggle relay and can further open the door for pulling it right in. With respect to security, it might not be the best option but you can always have someone to look after your garage.
Filed Under: Reviews