GarageBox Project

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GarageBox


After a year long hiatus, I've begun to finish my Olimex ESP8266DEV based project so that I can control my garage door and also a set of Christmas lights via WiFi.  Below is the current state of construction.

The large orange board on the left is an Olimex-ESP3266EVB development board.  It is actually two boards in one:  If you look at the upper left , you'll notice a smaller PCB with is the actual ESP3266 wifi module.  It sits atop a larger board that provides power, a programming port and a single control relay.  The relay on this board is what I will use to open & close the garage door.

In the lower right (black board) is a solid-state relay.  I plan to use this to control a string of lights hung above the garage door.

In the upper right (green board) is a 5VDC power supply.

Door Sensor


Below is the sensor that checks whether or not the garage door is closed.  It is an infra-red proximity sensor with an open collector output (E18-D80NK).  Since it is open-collector, a pull-up resistor is required. 



When the door is CLOSED, the sensor will be "On" (sensor output low).  When the door is OPEN, the sensor will be "Off" (sensor output high).  The sensor output will be attached to an input on the Olimex board, which will report the status of the sensor via web service.

Testing 

Installed and working.  I originally planned for the sensor to be mounted from the ceiling, but the range on it isn't long enough.   I'll clean up the wiring in the next day or so.


Follow-up

It turns out that the GB is interfering with the receiver in the garage door opener itself.   I'm pretty sure that if I just move the GB a few feet away from it, the problem should go away.  

Also I spoke with a good friend of mine who will make a simple bracket that will allow me to mount the sensor from the ceiling so that I don't have that gaudy blue box sitting up there.

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