Garage Node!

[SurgeTransient]

Hi everyone!

I've been tinkering with DIY home automation for over a year and discovered MySensors just over 3 months ago. If any MySensor dev's are reading this, THANKS! I've had a ton of fun building up my custom sensor network. I don't have many smart devices at my house, but I can control my living room lights (Philips Hue), kitchen lights (Philips Hue) and outdoor garage lights (GE Zwave switch) using a Raspberry Pi and OpenHAB. I have a detached garage and I thought it would be useful for me if my outdoor garage lights would automatically turn on past sunset when I opened my garage door. That way, I wouldn't have to fumble around with the keys to my house in the dark if I came home late at night. To accomplish this, I decided to monitor the position of my garage door and the time of day. OpenHAB was able to determine the time of day with the Astro binding, but I needed some kind of sensor to determine what state my garage door was in. I decided that I wanted to build a node that would collect information from sensors throughout my garage and send it wireless to my Raspberry PI via the MySensors network. Currently, I just want to monitor the state of my garage door but I wanted this node to allow future sensors to be added to it easily.

I started by making the perf board for the mico-controller and all the I/O. This was the first board I've made since college, so it's kinda ugly.

I built two more perf boards, one for +5V and +3.3V linear power supplies and another one with two I2C I/O expanders, PCF8574's.

Totally un-necessary, but i had a LCD display lying around, so I thought that would spice things up nicely.

I used a cheap plastic project box to house the electronics and 9 pin D-sub connectors for a cheap and simple way to connect external sensors to the Garage Node.

I had a temperature/humidity sensor lying around, so why not monitor that too?

Here's the Garage Node's final resting place (sorry for the blurry photo)! To detect if the garage door is closed or open, I used a hall effect sensor and glued a magnet to my garage door.

What other ways I want to use this Node:

1. Monitor the garage window's state
2. Monitor my side garage door's state
3. Add the ability to control my garage door (open/close)
   -I need to figure out message signing before I do this...
4. Add sensors to detect if my car is in my garage
5. Add motion sensors to automate my garage lights
6. Add a simple user interface to Garage Node using the LCD and a few push buttons mounted to the project box to help me debug my sensors within my garage during install or failure.

Does anyone have any ideas/feedback?

Thanks!

[gohan]

Maybe next time you could add a flash chip for Ota firmware and use I2C sensors to make wiring a lot simpler. You may consider using one of the many pcb available on openhardware.io to shrink down the size of that node 😁

[SurgeTransient]

This post is deleted!

[SurgeTransient]

@gohan I'm really interested in the OTA firmware updates, I'll have to check that feature out. Yeah, the pcbs's on openhardware.io look great, I just had the perf boards lying around, so I thought I would use them up. Thanks!

[alowhum]

My thoughts

• wow, hardcore oldschool.
• what are the ports on the bottom for?
• that screw spacing is pretty smart
• nice housing
• add monitoring for weird fumes and gasses? BME680 or something?
• Use the Nano Wireless Expansion Board and save yourself a lot of trouble?

[SurgeTransient]

@alowhum said in Garage Node!:

hardcore

Hey, sorry for the late reply! Just getting back into MySensors after a break. If you're referring to the Dsub ports on the bottom of the plastic enclosure, I just broke out 5V, COM and I/O from the two PCF8574 I/O expanders. I'll have to checkout the Nano wireless expansion board, half the fun for me is the perfboard soldering :). The gas sensor is a great idea too!

[Anand]

Hey there, I am also in the process of building the same. Getting a lot of help from you. Thanks.