Momentary On Using Pi GPIO To Control Garage Door

8 years 11 months ago #1664 by Boaz101
Thank you for this awesome automation program and the tutorials! I am trying to automate my garage door. I would like to be able to open and close the garage door. I bought an active low relay board and hooked it up using a NPN transistor and some resistors to reverse the polarity of the pi's gpio. I am able to control the relay board using the pi's gpio and a digital output in EasyIoT. However the garage door only needs the relay to be on for half a second for the door to start opening. Is there any way to do this in EasyIoT?

I am also going to tell if the door is open or closed using a reed switch connected to the pi's gpio. Can the status of the door be combined into one control where you can click Open or Close to control the garage door?

Thank you for any tips you can give me! When I get this working I will add it to the Community Projects.

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8 years 11 months ago #1670 by EasyIoT

Boaz101 wrote: Thank you for this awesome automation program and the tutorials! I am trying to automate my garage door. I would like to be able to open and close the garage door. I bought an active low relay board and hooked it up using a NPN transistor and some resistors to reverse the polarity of the pi's gpio. I am able to control the relay board using the pi's gpio and a digital output in EasyIoT. However the garage door only needs the relay to be on for half a second for the door to start opening. Is there any way to do this in EasyIoT?

I am also going to tell if the door is open or closed using a reed switch connected to the pi's gpio. Can the status of the door be combined into one control where you can click Open or Close to control the garage door?

Thank you for any tips you can give me! When I get this working I will add it to the Community Projects.


Do not control GPIO pins directly from UI interface. Use virtual switch and automation.
To switch on GPIO for 500ms on use DriverHelper.ProcessCommad and ControlOn and ControlOff and System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(500); between. In automation logic check door status and with digital input and reed switch update virtual switch status accordingly. Also use reed switch status to send command to open or close door.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Boaz101

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8 years 10 months ago #1729 by Boaz101
Thank you! I was able to use GetProperty to tell if the reed switch is open or closed. If an event comes in from the virtual switch and the door is already in that state the event is ignored. Works quite well. I am currently using Digital Output "On" for Garage Door open and "Off" for Garage Door closed. Is there any way to rename the states of the Digital Output so the UI displays Closed and Open?

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8 years 10 months ago #1735 by EasyIoT

Boaz101 wrote: Thank you! I was able to use GetProperty to tell if the reed switch is open or closed. If an event comes in from the virtual switch and the door is already in that state the event is ignored. Works quite well. I am currently using Digital Output "On" for Garage Door open and "Off" for Garage Door closed. Is there any way to rename the states of the Digital Output so the UI displays Closed and Open?


Not in current version. In my development version (not yet released)you can rename states for DO and DI. It will be included in nex release.

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8 years 5 months ago #2493 by lennysh
Did you ever get this completely figured out? I'm new to EasyIoT Server, and am wanting to do the exact same thing...

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8 years 5 months ago #2495 by lennysh
I made a RPiGPIO module that controls the Pin, and a virtual switch to turn that pin on and off, but did I even need to create the RPiGPIO module at all? Is there anyway to control the Pin without having a module added for it? I guess it wouldn't be a big deal if you could hide the module (would be a nice feature in the next version) from the main screen. I'd hate for the relay to get turned on and left on by accident.

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