February 16, 2015

The Raspberry Pi garage door controller with a twist

If there's one household device which is often the target of some fun over-engineering - it's the remote-control garage door. And this latest example by Tanner Stokes is an interesting example of using image recognition to detect changes in a situation which can then be controlled with the Raspberry Pi.

Instead of using sensors to detect the position of the garage door, this system uses a webcam with OpenCV to detect the presenve of clearly-defined shapes on the back of the garage door. With some logical programming the system can report on movement of the door, and record activity with the webcam for use later on. A neat demonstration of the system and code is shown in the following video:

For more information, visit Tanner's website. And for more, we're on facebookGoogle+, and twitter - so follow us for news and product updates as well.

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This is a great way to add your own electronic components, circuitry, sensors or other devices to your Raspberry Pi model A+, B+ or 2 Model B - any of the current Raspberry Pis with a 40 pin GPIO header. The PiBreak Plus also includes a GPIO female header to solder yourself, and a pair of nuts, bolts, washers and spacers to ensure a a great fit.

And in the Freetronics fashion we've used a quality gold-plated (ENIG) PCB for durability, brought out all the power rails along with the GPIO next to the prototyping area to make adding circuits a breeze. Furthermore the pinouts are labelled on both the top and bottom of the PCB to save time referencing the right GPIO pins. For more information and to order - visit the PiBreak plus page now!

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