I thought i did my coolest project yet so I’ll share it.
I have big windows in front of my house and the bathroom is visible from the front of the house. Imagine a tiny house in the countryside of Japan. There’s a pocket sliding door to the bathroom. So, awhile ago I bought an automatic door opener because we were lazy about closing the door. We wanted to open our front windows more, but were concerned we’d expose ourselves in the bathroom. So, my solution was an automatic sliding door that closes when we go in and out.
I found a nice automatic/magnetic sliding track from a seller in China and installed it a few months ago. I was talking to the seller and he mentioned the door has an app where you can control settings. I checked the app out and I could automatically control the door!
So, yesterday, I decided to reverse engineer the app by bluetooth sniffing and using an Olimex esp32 bluetooth proxy to send commands. And then, integrated it as a switch in home assistant.
The final result → I can now control the door of my control panel.
People may ask what is the use case – well, some ideas i have are
a) open the bathroom door when the robot vacuum is running
b) Open the door and keep it open at night or when there is low light (implying the curtains are closed) so it’s easier to go in and out of the bathroom. I have Aqara illuminance sensors around.
I made a video of how it works - not sure how to embed it so here’s a link!
The door opens faster than it closes (that’s a setting) - so you wont see it open but you’ll see it close.
