My Garage Door Opener - Hardware

The Nitty-Gritty (Hardware)

(This is a post in my series about my Garage Door Opener.  Yes I wrote a series. About a Garage Door Opener.  Check it out:

• Hardware
• Software
• Installation
• Easier ESP8266 Development

Thanks!)

In a previous long winded post I detailed the history of how I built and installed my IoT Garage Door controller.  However, that blog was light on technical details, and I'm going to cover those here.

USB CAN

USB TO CAN INTERFACE

Back in August 2015 my mate needed a USB to CAN converter.  So we rolled our own, and here's some pics of the build.  

Let me know if you're interested in more details. 

Optoisolated Serial Coms

When Digital Meets Analogue

For my Multi-channel meter, I used some FL817 opto-isolators from Aliexpress.  Why?  Cheapest I could find.

I was then dissapointed to find that they didn't work at 115200 baud, but did at 9600.  I parked that for a while, then decided to take a look at it later.  It's now later :)

My ESP-8266 Programmer

Easier ESP-8266 Programming

When I started developing my ESP8266 based projects, I started with ESP-01 modules and built a programming jig to help put the ESP-01 into programming mode. 

And this got tedious, fast.  When your Arduino code was ready to be uploaded, you have to hold down GPIO_0, hit RESET and then hit upload.  Never mind the fact with this ESP-01 unit you have to then unplug it an place it back in your main board afterwards.

So to overcome the tedium, I cooked up this!

Yet Another IoT Garage Door Opener

Job Done, Finally!

(This is a post in my series about my Garage Door Opener.  Yes I wrote a series. About a Garage Door Opener.  Check it out:

• Hardware
• Software
• Installation
• Easier ESP8266 Development

Thanks!)

Okay, so I've written a little about this before.  Back in 2013 I added a light to my garage door, and then started to work out how to control it with my phone.

Let me (finally) tell you how I did it!

Installed and Ready to Go!

Easier ESP8266 Development

Or How to Learn from My 4 Years of Frustration

(This is a post in my series about my Garage Door Opener.  Yes I wrote a series. About a Garage Door Opener.  Check it out:

• Hardware
• Software
• Installation
• Easier ESP8266 Development

Thanks!)

Okay, so that took a little longer than expected.....

Back in 2013 I built a light for my Garage Door and my daughter said it would be cool if I could control it from my phone.

My original plan was to simply use a Bluetooth to serial converter, type 'open' in an iPhone app and job's done.

However, my iPhone 4 didn't support Blue Tooth Low Energy, and I was hearing good stuff about this $5 WiFi chip, the ESP8266.

So, I thought I'd give it a go.  But, no, this post isn't about the widget I built, but rather a collection of tip's for anyone else who wants to try developing  with an ESP8266 from scratch.  There was a lot to learn, and if you're looking to get started with the ESP866, please read on and learn from my mistakes!

TV TROUBLE

Unhappy Wife

The other night, the TV stopped working.  Home and Away was getting missed and the wife wasn't happy.

About 10 years ago I installed an active antenna, and used some crimp connectors to terminate the Quad Shield RG6.  This cable carries both the RF signal and 5V DC to power the amp. 

A quick measure with the multimeter showed that the volts were around 2V at the feed to the amp so it looked like there was an issue with the cable.  

The outer insulation looked ok, but there was grey powder at the crimp connection itself.  

So I stripped back the outer jacket to find:

- that I was right.  The cable was stuffed.