Did I Close the Garage Door?
An Anonymous Coward writes:
Sander Huijen has an interesting couple of posts detailing how he solved the dilemma of whether he closed the garage door when he left using an ESP32 and a Raspberry-Pi.
I'm in a good position that I can rent a house with a garage. The garage even has an electric door with remote control. Every now and then, after I've left the house, I can't quite remember if I've closed the garage door. I guess it's one of those "did I lock the door?" or "did I turn the gas off?" situations. I probably did, I just can't quite remember.
Because I'm in a rental house, I'm not allowed to change anything to it without the owner's permission. So hacking the garage door opener electronics is out of the question, unfortunately.
Since I usually think about the garage door when I'm not even that far from home (but far enough to not want to turn around if unnecessary), I decided that all I need is to know whether it's closed or not. And that part is easy without having too much impact on the structural integrity of the house (and so can be achieved without permission).
I used a SparkFun "The Thing" ESP32 device with a few external components, mainly a 2400mAh Li-Po battery and a reed switch. The idea is to put the reed switch in a position that it closes when the door is closed. It's hooked up between a GPIO pin with an internal pull-up resistor and ground. This means that the GPIO input is LOW when the door is closed, and HIGH when the door is open.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.