August 01, 2016

Remotely Open Your Garage Door Using the Freetronics EtherTen and WIFI

For those who are chronically forgetful or who often find themselves locked out of home, Instructables member and Freetronics customer MegunoLink has developed a system that allows you to open your garage using only your smartphone, granting quick and easy entry even without your keys.

Garage Door

The project uses an EtherTen to host a web page which can be accessed from any device on your local network. When you enter the password on the website, the Arduino switches a relay that triggers the opening of the garage door. The project should work on most motorised garage doors and only requires basic soldering to assemble. All of the parts are readily available, and completing this project will introduce you to the basics of controlling anything and everything over the internet.

EtherTen

Once you have obtained the parts required, you could easily add internet connectivity to your garage door in a few days - visit the Instructables page to get started. To find out about more cool projects like this follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re looking for an Arduino Uno compatible board that can talk to the world and add connectivity to your projects, use our Freetronics EtherTen - the Arduino-Uno compatible board with built in Ethernet:

EthernTen

2016/08/01

Chris Hiscox said:

Great project that can be integrated into many home automation engines such as Openhab.
A note to all to check what happens when power goes off unexpectedly. I found in my version of this project that on power restoration the door would open. This was due to the timing of the arduino pins allowing the relay to close momentarily. Enough to trigger the door to open. I found this out in the middle of the.night when the wife nudged me and said " is that our garage door opening " at which point I had to come clean about my days work.

I went a stage futher on this idea and have a 4 relay board. The second relay turns on power to led strips along the ceiling which are far brighter than the winder bulb. The timing is about the same too.
Following that I have now fitted two magnetic contacts so Openhab knows if the door is open/closed/or part open. Nothing like piece of mind when the garage door is the weakest link in securing your house.

2016/08/27

Christian Baatz said:

Locate the emergency release rope that is connected to the door opener’ motor carriage. The rope is where the opener arm connects to the door.

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