Smart Garage Door Opener (5)

Step 20. Add certs to web server and client side

Step 21. Mount the Components on Plexiglass [optional]

Shutdown the Raspberry Pi and remove power:

$ sudo shutdown -h 0

Mount the components on a small sheet of plexiglass (3-1/4x6inches).

• Drill holes

• Use M2.5 size hex nuts, standoffs and bolts

Step 23. Put the Garage Door Opener in a Case

My house has is a built in desk and cabinets by the garage door. The desk has several books on it. So, I chose to put the Raspberry Pi, Relay and Remote in a secret book. I got the secret book at Michael’s for about $7. I cut some small holes for the wires and the power cord. I also drilled a 1inch hole on the pages for the fan.

You can put the smart garage door opener in anything you would like.

In the photo above,

• The four blue dots are from the battery, which is on the bottom

• Next is a sheet of of plexiglass with the three major components, which from top to bottom are:

  • • Remote Control

    • Relay

    • Raspberry Pi Zero WH

• The devices are connected to the plexiglass so they don't move around

Be very careful with any heat around the battery. They are extremely flammable. Carefully, I put some small dabs of hot glue to keep the battery and plexiglass in place.

Step 25. Try it out

The project is done. Try it out and ensure it works.

References:

Raspberry Pi Garage Door Opener by quartarian

My original garage door instructable

SunFounder 2 Channel 5V Relay Shield Module for Arduino UNO 2560 1280 ARM PIC AVR STM32

• 5V 2-Channel Relay interface board, and each one needs 15-20mA

• Driver Current Equipped with high-current relay, AC250V 10A ; DC30V 10A

• Standard interface that can be controlled directly by microcontroller (Arduino , 8051, AVR, PIC, DSP, ARM, ARM, MSP430, TTL logic)

• Indication LED's for Relay output status Link to download the document: https://app.box.com/s/tn34l4ub64ndeo1mb0ec

Troubleshooting:

directories or paths

The github repository shows the directories where the files should be stored

email and text message issues

If you are having issues, then try this:

$ echo "test" | sendmail -v ♣your-gmail-account♣@gmail.com

If email is setup correctly, then you should get an email in your gmail account.

If you get an authentication failure:

You may need to lower security on your account. However, lowering security is NOT recommended. Google will send an email with a link to lower security setting.

You can switch from your current email reader to use www.gmail.com to access your account (recommended) or change your settings at https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecu... so that your account is no longer protected by modern security standards.

I do not recommend lowering your security standards.

If you get an Authorization failure:

The most probable cause of this is that you have specified a wrong username or password for your gmail account in the /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf file. Double check the values of the AuthUser and AuthPass fields.

If you get connection lost in the middle of processing:

Chances are you specified the wrong port for the Google smtp somewhere in /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf or in /etc/ssmtp/revaliases.

Check the last lines of your logs. There should be some relevant error messages in there:

$ tail /var/log/mail.log

$ tail /var/log/syslog

Garage Door won’t open

If everything was working and it just stops, then try restarting. If that doesn't work, try

$ sudo shutdown -h 0

Then pull the power cord from Raspberry Pi, and then restore power. The Raspberry Pi should reboot in less than 2 minutes and everything should work fine. This is generally caused by a loss of power to a home Gateway or Wi-Fi Access Point.

GPIO

If anything goes wrong, then the best way to see what is happening is with the gpio commands:

$ gpio readall

Logs

If something goes wrong, check these logs for errors, warnings or other issues.

$ cat /var/log/messages

$ cat /var/log/syslog

$ cat /var/log/dmesg

Raspberry Pi home directory

$ pwd

/home/pi

Raspberry Pi hostname

$hostname

hostname = ♣hostname♣

Raspberry Pi IP

♣raspberry-pi-ip♣ = 192.168.1.93

SECO-LARM stops working

In the old implementation, after two years of use, the SECO-LARM stopped working. To say this correctly, the sensor pin on the Raspberry Pi stopped detecting the 3.3v input. I tried 3.3v physical pins 1 and 17, and both were still outputting 3.3v. I switched from the original sebsor pin to another pin and it started working again. So, there is nothing wrong with the SECO-LARM. The problem seems to be with the Raspberry Pi GPIO.

The is a very good post on how to test GPIO pins.

I was not sure why the GPIO pin stopped working. Here are possible reasons:

• I have the Seco-larm sensor mounted so when the door is closed it outputs 3.3v. The garage door is closed more often then it is open. Perhaps, the GPIO pin cannot take a more-or-less constant input of 3.3v.

• The failure coincided with a power loss, perhaps there was a power spike.

• I did not use the Raspberry Pi's built-in resistors (the issue has not repeated since I did this)

Potential Future Changes:

• Replace remote with the original doorbell click as an option

• Replace remote with something that replaces the entire doorbell. Power RPi from doorbell wiring

• Create custom case

• Create iPhone app