Garage door closer

[rperre]

Hey,

Trying to see what people are using for controlling their garage doors.

e.g. i want to make sure it's closed, especially at night with the ability to leave it open while working in the garage.

I've seen some "garage door closers" but was wondering if anybody had a nice LinuxMCE solution they used?

Thank you,

Richard

[tschak909]

Some garage door openers have contact closure points. These garage doors can be attached to a GC-100, and controlled by LinuxMCE. They could be set up as "Drapes" in this fashion, and be treated as a light. Although, maybe we could add a generic garage door, and attach logic to it at a later date...

-Thom

[hari]

the everspring door/window sensors also has one external contact closure input..

br Hari

[tschak909]

Sorry, I meant "relay" not contact closure.

-Thom

[purps]

I think what I am going to do (please shout if anybody has a better idea!) is to buy a "standard" garage door closer with a wired wall switch included. Then, surely you can just replace this wall switch with a Z-wave version? Add a Z-wave door/window sensor as well, and there you go.

One problem that I foresee is finding a garage door closer with a wired switch - most seem to boast wireless wall switches (in addition to the key ring remotes you usually get).

I think I would also need to add some sort of break-beam sensor as well, just in case I'm working on the car half in/half out of the garage. Does anybody have any recommendations for this?

EDIT: This looks just the job if my idea is going to work... http://www.doortronic.co.uk/acatalog/Lift_King_LK800_Professional.html#

[rperre]

purps here in the USA all garage door openers i know of have the wired switches, and you don't have to replace, you can just wire into these with e.g. a low power relay switch.

The "break beam" sensors as you call them should always be included with the opener, that's a safety issue and i think a required item for garage door openers.

I'm probably going for some door sensors (open/close) and the relay to the wall switch.

Richard

[purps]

Think I may have misunderstood - how does LMCE communicate with the opener if you don't replace the wall switch that comes with it with a Z-wave (for example) version?

[rperre]

The wall switch is just that.... a switch. So what you can do is buy a low voltage switch from any of the company's and have it "close" the switch for you.

Let's say we go with the X10 as an example.

1. I would need door contacts to tell me the door is open or closed
2. you connect this to lmce through the X10 powerflash e.g. (or you can go with the GC-100, or other generic serial device). This will report the open/close status to lmce and you can run a event based on this (let's say when open.. 5 min later close it)
3. To close it you can directly wire into the wall switch with the X10 universal module which is a low power relay, so the event from lmce will send the signal to this module to close the garage door. The module will simulate the close on the door switch for the garage door to close, et voila garage door closed.

Now you can go through your orbiters and open and close your garage door too, so if you have your mobile device setup, you could open the garage door for maybe one of your kids that forgot the key or your wife, or a delivery man to put something in your garage.

For safety the door beam sensors will not allow the garage to go down if something is blocking it.

Now this can be done with any of the systems and their modules, like zwave or make your own proprietary one with e.g. an arduino.

I would make a disable switch for it though, so when you are working in the garage you can leave it open.

Richard

[purps]

Thanks for the detailed explanation, that's much clearer in my mind now.