Introduction
In the beginning
I received a phone call from my girlfriend (soon to be wife) one day that she had left the keys in the house and couldn’t get in. I groaned and left early from work. It was 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. Luckily, our neighbor was home and let her hang out while I made my way home. When I came to get her we wondered why the heck we couldn’t just open our garage door with our phones.
Commercial network enabled garage door openers cost at least $100 dollars! So we decided to document our experience with this project. My girlfriend and I are software developers and our neighbor is a mechanical engineer–we should be able to figure this out! So we decided to document our experience with a DIY garage door opener. Hopefully this will be a springboard to other home automation projects.
What you need to know
Sometimes I take for granted what I know and other times I think something really simple takes a good while to learn. To follow along our journey here’s what you need to know (or don’t mind learning)
- Linux commands (navigate the directories, how to edit text files, ssh’ing to remote hosts)
- Basic electronics and wiring (switches, transistors, relays, Etc.)
I will provide links to resources in each of the posts for those that are rusty or have never been exposed to these concepts.