Goal to create a web based garage door opener that should retrofit to most standard openers. Tested with circa 1990s Chamberlain 1/2 hp opener. Once competed your garage door could be opened from your cellphone or computer.
Raspberry PI – Raspbian (Rev B used for these instructions but should adapt to other versions)
1 BreadBoard
Jumper Wires
1 5v Relay (GS-SH-205T depicted)
1 Transistor (2N-2222-A338)
1 Diode
1K resistor
Bell Wire (or similar)
and of-course a garage door opener
Assumptions:
Raspberry Pi has a power source
Raspberry Pi is on your home network either via Wireless Adapter or Wired
Step 1: The Circuit
To cause the Garage Door to open we will use a Relay to mimic the pressing of a garage door opener button.
We are going use one of the 5v pins to charge the relay. To do this on demand we use a transistor to switch the 5v circuit on and off using one of the GPIOs.
The diode is used to allow the relay coil to discharge slowly preventing undue stress on the Pi circuitry.
Here is a reference to the Pi Pin layout as it relates to these instructions and to WiringPi the software used to control the GPIO which we will discuss later.
The 2 leads wire to the Garage door opener in the same way a wired switch is wired to the opener.
Note: Be sure to check your transistors pins so you don’t blow up your Pi. In this example the 5v circuit is attached to the Transistors Collector, the GPIO pin is attached to the Transistors Base and the Pi’s Ground is connected to the Transistors Emitter.
Step 2: PI Software
Starting with a Pi that is running Raspbian we Install the following software. (To keep this instructable simple I have linked to instructions for installing these.)
Apache (WebServer) Part 5
FTP (Convenient way to update the WebContent) Part 7
WiringPi (Command line GPIO controls)
Step 3: The Button (Garage.html)
The first file on our Website is Garage.html which contains minimalistic code to provide a button for us to interact with. You can of-course elaborate on this to your hearts content, but this is bare bones.
For more detail: Web Enabled Garage Door (Raspberry Pi)
