Sonoff 4 Channel Pro with Spare Remote Smart Garage Door

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1

Made a Smart Garage Door for my Liftmaster Security 2.0 Garage Door. Details of the build are here

https://www.hagensieker.com/wordpress/2019/01/29/making-your-garage-door-smart/

IMG_5884
IMG_58842776Ɨ2081 1.88 MB

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Why use the Sonoff when you have an ESP board doing the door position detection?

Use the ESP board to activate the door as well (via an optocoupler if the door controller isnā€™t 3.3v logic).

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Yep thatā€™s what I used esp with relay and ultrasonic sonoff 4 ch seems overkill

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My garage door is Security 2.0. I canā€™t just toggle the relay on the door opener itself.

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Iā€™m not asking you to. Connect an ESP output pin to one of the buttons of the remote (at the same place you used the sonoff relay). i.e use the esp to sense the door and push the remote button. No need for the sonoff.

From the photo the remote has a 3v lithium coin cell. So the ESP and remote wonā€™t even need a relay or optocoupler.

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I gotcha. Thanks. Can the ESP8266 simulate the inching function of the Sonoff? I can load Homie or Tasmota firmware. Thatā€™s the only thing I canā€™t square up in my mindā€¦just hitting the button for the 1 second or so needed.

Thanks for the help and explanation. Iā€™d love to use this 4 Channel pro for something else.

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Absolutely it can. This is my favourite ā€˜plug and playā€™ platform for the esp:

All configured with a simple yaml file.

Edit: actually I misread that as ā€˜latchingā€™ not inching. Not sure how that works. If itā€™s just pulses it should work.

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Thatā€™s what Iā€™m trying to figure out. I have a spare ESP8266 and trying to get a button push to go from on to off to on again. Triggering the remote will leave it in the on state I think unless you use some kind of inching relay.

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Have a read lower down this page: GPIO Switch ā€” ESPHome

To create momentary switches, for example switches that toggle a pin for a moment, you can use template switches.

An example that uses a single relay to activate a remote control button. The button can only start or stop the motor of the gate. In itself, the button or remote can not know if it opens or closes the gate. The relay simulates the button press for 500ms.

switch:
  - platform: gpio
    pin: 25
    id: relay
  - platform: template
    name: "Gate Remote"
    icon: "mdi:gate"
    optimistic: no
    turn_on_action:
    - switch.turn_on: relay
    - delay: 500ms
    - switch.turn_off: relay
10

I kind of dug deeper into this and found out I could hook a $3 single channel relay to a GPIO on the Nodemcu that was flashed with Tasmota and give it a ā€œPulseTime 10ā€ command which equals a one second activation of the relay.

Iā€™ll test this a few days before deploying it. Would love to get that 4 Channel Pro back for other projects.

Some advantages of the 4 channel pro though are that it is RF controlled and you can program a super cheap keychain remote to open the garage. That means instead of buying $28 spare remotes for family I can pay a fraction of that.

In addition to that I have several 433 MHz outlets around the house. So not only could family open the garage door with the $5 remote they could turn some lights on in the house first.

The 4 Channel Pro of course is better suited to a 2 car garage and room to grow with devices and such. So far the 4 Channel Pro has not hiccuped and caused any problems. Unsure about the Nodemcu and cheap relay as it is untested.

And the 4 Channel Pro looks better and more professional than just having relays and ESP8266ā€™s stuck to the garage wall.

One thing not acceptable to me is the garage door going up uncommanded, although I wrote an automation to auto close it after a few minutes.

Fun project and yeah, the 4 Channel Pro might be overkill, but Iā€™m an overkill kind of guy. But if the Nodemcu and relay are robust enoughā€¦

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I have nodemcus all over my house. Never had an issue with any of them (that wasnā€™t due to my mis-configuration).

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So do I. What firmware? I just figured out you can put Tasmota on these things. I was running Homie but I like the control interface of Tasmota WAY better.

Last night I already had one hiccup with it. I was in the Console for a while and when I flipped back to the Main page the relay fired. Thatā€™s not acceptable for a garage door, and I travel quite a bit.

Since then I hard restarted it and have been trying to recreate and canā€™t. I wouldnā€™t care if this were a lamp or something but the end game is garage door. Iā€™m gone way too much to have my garage door just going up by itself.

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ESPHome.

Everything is configured with a simple web interface and a yaml file.