Advice The Home Improvement/Automation Thread

Yeah, the feeling of accomplishment when you've made something new and it works is pretty awesome. "hey, I'm not completely retarded"

I'm trying to have one of those moments at work right now except OpenCL is kicking my ass.
 
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...and I'm back to feeling like an idiot. I assumed that the switches that tell the opener if the door is all the way open as a simple contact switch. However, that doesn't seem to be the case somehow. Or at least my little chip can't figure out if the circuit is open or closed. It just constantly thinks it open. Also, the sensor doesn't seem to work when I have this thing inline. Fuck.
 
fly said:
...and I'm back to feeling like an idiot. I assumed that the switches that tell the opener if the door is all the way open as a simple contact switch. However, that doesn't seem to be the case somehow. Or at least my little chip can't figure out if the circuit is open or closed. It just constantly thinks it open. Also, the sensor doesn't seem to work when I have this thing inline. Fuck.
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GGCkXSZ.jpg
 
fly said:
...and I'm back to feeling like an idiot. I assumed that the switches that tell the opener if the door is all the way open as a simple contact switch. However, that doesn't seem to be the case somehow. Or at least my little chip can't figure out if the circuit is open or closed. It just constantly thinks it open. Also, the sensor doesn't seem to work when I have this thing inline. Fuck.
Click to expand...
Draw up a diagram of how it's all wired up.
 
gee said:
Draw up a diagram of how it's all wired up.
Click to expand...
I looked again. It literally is a contact switch. The 'block' that actually pulls the door up and down reaches a plastic lever at the end of its travel. That switch has a single wire on it. When the 'block' hits that lever, it closes a circuit with the metal track stopping the door. I verified this by opening the door and then manually grounding the wire to track. When I did that, it stopped.

Now that I type this out, I know I have it wired wrong (yet again). I cut the door closed sensor wire and basically spliced the Wemos in the middle, one side of the wire connected to the contact pin (D3) and the other side connected to GND. That isn't going to work.

How can I set this up so the Wemos can detect when the circuit closes?
 
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Got a multimeter? Open the door halfway or disconnect the switch, and measure the sense voltage that the opener drives into the switch.
 
fly said:
Now that I type this out, I know I have it wired wrong (yet again). I cut the door closed sensor wire and basically spliced the Wemos in the middle, one side of the wire connected to the contact pin (D3) and the other side connected to GND. That isn't going to work.
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I call this "penguin debugging", because I do it all the time - I talk the algorithm out to the stuffed penguin on my desk, and we discover what's wrong together that way.
 
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That's a tough one to do with optoisolation/relays/etc. Where are you mounting the wireless doohickey, up next to the garage opener motor or elsewhere?

Also, what's the model # of the opener?
 
gee said:
That's a tough one to do with optoisolation/relays/etc. Where are you mounting the wireless doohickey, up next to the garage opener motor or elsewhere?

Also, what's the model # of the opener?
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Yeah, that was my reasoning for mounting it next to the opener: I thought it would be easy to also monitor the contact switch. Oops!

Genie ACSR3G
 
The picspam uploader is constipated but I sent in a sketch of what you'll need to do. You'll need a 2N7002 transistor, or some other N-channel field effect transistor, and a pull-up resistor.

You'll need to ground your wireless board's ground to the opener ground, otherwise smoke/fire (or more likely, just a dead wireless module) will result.
 
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