LowPowerLab Forum

Hardware support => Moteino => Topic started by: billchurch on October 26, 2013, 04:12:34 PM

Title: Ideas for Garagemote v2
Post by: billchurch on October 26, 2013, 04:12:34 PM
Just completed this, working great.  I had a few thoughts for Garagemote v2.

It's probably just me, but I really loathe soldering wire to header pins.  What about putting some screwless or screw terminals for v2?

I've seen some 0.1" pitch screwless ones on a few different sites (Adafruit/Sparkfun), they look like they'd do the trick.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8077

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1074

I also have a Genie garage door opener that has two buttons, one for the light and one for the door.  I haven't reverse engineered it yet, but the switch shares a single pair of wire for both light and door.  It looks like it's just using a resister to differentiate between the two.

Would be neat to have a little proto space on the top of this so you could get access to a few more of the I/O lines so you could make something like that happen. 

Otherwise, it's pretty slick, I'm going to work up one on some protoboard to accommodate for these ideas.



Title: Re: Ideas for Garagemote v2
Post by: Felix on October 26, 2013, 10:35:44 PM
Thanks for the feedback :)
You can always source 0.1" screwless terminals and use those on the existing header. I wanted to keep it as compact as I could.
But every opinion counts, will definitely keep it in mind. Also the proto area is a good idea. I could extend all the pins sideways and have a proto area on each side maybe, or even in the middle of the board.

The lights share the same 2 wires, my wall opener alters the signal with an electrolytic capacitor to turn the light on. I didn't want to make this standard since I don't really have a good way to know if the light is on or off - mine turns off automatically after a door action after about 1 minute or so, and like you said, it could still easily be implemented if desired.
Title: Re: Ideas for Garagemote v2
Post by: billchurch on October 27, 2013, 09:59:05 AM
Yeah, I was trying to think of how you'd know if the light's on or off, a photo resistor could probably do it, but that wouldn't account for other lights that may be in the garage.  Could tune the threshold of the photo resistor to report at a certain level, especially if you put it square in front of the bulb.
Title: Re: Ideas for Garagemote v2
Post by: Felix on October 27, 2013, 07:54:56 PM
It would be a little tough, in my case the garage is very brightly lit during part of the day.
I personally don't have a need to turn on the lights, the garage left open was more of a big deal.
Title: Re: Ideas for Garagemote v2
Post by: billchurch on October 29, 2013, 08:56:31 AM
Understood, not really that big of a deal, but it's a button and I want to control it. ;)