DashFest JJ's life and project dumping grounds…

Quick n dirty iPhone controlled garage door

Soo uh... There is a PC connected to my garage door. Is that wrong?

I saw this piece on hackaday today, and thought I'd give it a shot with a different method. I actually managed to complete it in 3 hours!

I had one of these sitting around:

Its a Presidian PIC-1MM Personal Internet Communicator I picked up at the DI for $5. Its basically a tiny low power AMD Geode powered PC running Windows CE. I hacked the BIOS on it a while back and installed Windows XP (requires a BIOS hack to run a custom OS). It currently has a Cisco AE1000 wireless dongle for network connectivity. All running fine from a 12v 1.5amp brick.

Next part:

This is a Velleman K8055 USB Interface board. It allows you to control numerous inputs and outputs via USB digitally, or analog. I built it a while back for an abandoned project, and had no use for it. The relay connected to the side is what activates the garage door opener "button". The capacitor/resistor combo just above it allows the relay to click momentarily, even if the output is constant. We don't want to hold the garage door button down.

Now we just toss it all on top of the door opener:

The software:
http://k8055.transcendsolutions.net/
This is a K8055 "Bridge" that runs in windows, and allows any iOS device to control the K8055 from anywhere. There is a $3 app in the iTunes store to install on the phone. Its secured with a "key" to prevent other phones from connecting.

...and thats it! It works great! I will probably eventually write my own software, as the K8055 Bridge software is clunky.