Bob Murphy published this detailed guide how to build a garage door monitor with your RaspberryPi. There are lots of garage door monitor projects on hackster.io and other Maker sites. Many are single-purpose solutions. The author wanted a project that would be extensible, to build on the skills learned for future IOT projects.
Also, he wanted a platform that was well-documented and well-supported. Adafruit’s cloud service for Makers, adafruit.io, fit the requirements.
An Adafruit Feather Huzzah checks whether the garage door is open/shut via a magnetic switch, then sends the current status to an adafruit.io feed.
His basic setup:
- GarageDoorMon doesn’t use a battery, it’s powered by a 5V adapter; you’ll need a long wire from the door and place the Feather Huzzah near a mains power source
- Logic is reversed, a ‘1’ is sent to adafruit.io when the garage door is open, ‘0’ when closed(SHUT)
- Raspberry pi zero W runs a system service to monitor the door status, shows on 4-digit display
- Can be used with IFTTT to notify user via email, text message etc
- The Pi Zero W uses MQTT subscribe directly from adafruit.io feed, via Python client code.
To get full information on the process, parts used, images describing the installation and setup follow the link to original article! Well worth your time!
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