I finally submitted my order for prototype PCBs for my Raspberry Pi ‘HAT’ that I’ll be using for my Raspberry Pi garage door opener. In the end I wound up with this:
- 2 relays, used to activate the doors. These are driven by relay drivers.
- 2 rotary encoder inputs (A and B for 2 encoders), to allow my FreeBSD rotary encoder driver to determine the position of the doors.
- 2 closed door switch inputs. I’m using Honeywell magnetic switches here.
- 2 pushbutton inputs. I want to be able to activate the garage doors when standing in front of my garage door unit (inside the garage near the doors).
- 4 LED outputs. I’m using a tricolor panel-mount LED indicator for each door, which will show green when the door is closed, flashing yellow when the door is moving, steady yellow when the door is open but not moving, and will flash red whenever the door is activated.
I’m using anti-vandal pushbuttons for the door activation buttons. Not because I need the anti-vandal feature, but because they are flat and not easy to push accidentally. The ones I’m using have blue ring illumination.
I’m using Apem Q-Series indicator LEDs.
The enclosure I’m using at the moment is a Hammond translucent blue polycarbonate box. Probably larger then I need, but it’ll let me house a POE splitter to power the whole thing via power over ethernet.
I still need to finish the mechanical stuff… mainly the mounting and connection of the rotary encoders. I have a drawing for part of it for FrontPanelExpress, but I don’t really need to go that route for myself. The main issue I’m still debating is whether I can come up with something cheaper and lighter than Lovejoy couplings to connect them to the garage doors.
In any event, I believe I have fully functioning backend software and the web interface works fine. Everything is encrypted, and authentication is required to activate the doors.