GarageDoorMonitor

The Garage Door Monitor continously monitors whether your garage door is closed, and sends out an email or text message if it has been left open for more than 15 minutes. It uses the popular ESP8266 WiFi module, and relays messages to you via the IFTTT web service. In our household, we have accidentally left the garage door open on multiple occasions, and this device has saved our bacon more than once.

Features:

• Email and/or text sent every 15 minutes when your door has been left open, notifying you what time it was opened and how long
• Email/text sent once your door has been closed
• Synchronization with NIST time
• Enable/disable button, which can temporarily disable the monitor
• RGB LED indicating monitor status
• OLED Display
• Configurable settings via WiFi access point
• (Optional) logging of door status via Adafruit IO

The following parts are required, as pictured below:

• NodeMCU V1.0 development board (sometimes also listed as v2 at online shops such as eBay or AliExpress)
• 5V Micro-USB power supply (500 mA or higher)
• Normally Open magnetic switch
• (2) Female headers
• Common Anode RGB LED
• Screw Terminal Block (2 pin 3.5mm Pitch)
• 6x6mm tactile button
• 10K resistor
• (3) 300 Ohm resistors
• (Optional) 4-pin male header
• (Optional) Printed Circuit Board (Eagle files included)
• (Optional) 128x64 I2C OLED Display (Preferably a two-color display, e.g., yellow/blue)

The PCB is indicated as optional, since the circuit is simple enough to hand solder on a PCB breadboard if desired (schematic shown below). An OLED display as shown below can enhance the monitor, but is not necessary. There are also two different variations of 3D printed cases provided, one which is used when there is no OLED display, and the other to be used with an OLED. The non-OLED case was designed in OpenSCAD, and the OLED case (pictured below) was designed in Sketchup 2017.

Instructions

1. Set up an account at IFTTT.com. Add the "Webhook" service to your account. Record the Webhook service API Key for later use, which can be found under the Webhook service settings. It is a long character sequence following at the end of the URL in Settings, i.e., the character sequence appearing at API_KEY in https://maker.ifttt.com/use/API_KEY. Note: once the key is created, do not press the "Edit connection" link, or it will create a new key and remove the old one.
2. In IFTTT, create a new applet. You should see a sentence that says "if +this then that". Press "+this", and choose the "Webhook" service. Select the "Receive a web request" trigger. Call the event "door_open", and create the trigger. Next, press "+that" (from the "if this then that" sentence) and choose the Gmail service. Select the "Send and email" action. Choose Gmail as the action (the "then that" part). Place the desired emails on the To line (text messages can also be sent depending on the provider, e.g., as xxxxxxxxxx@txt.att.net). Fill out the Subject as: Garage Door Open for "{{Value1}}" Minutes. Fill out the body as: The Garage Door was opened at {{Value1}} and has been open for {{Value2}} minutes. Press the "Create action" buttong. It should look as shown below:

3. Create another applet in IFTTT with Webhook as the trigger and Gmail as the action. Call the Webhook event name "door_closed". Put in the desired email(s) for the Gmail action and fill out the Subject and Body as shown below:

4. Create an additional applet which will send out an email at midnight every day giving you confirmation that your door monitor is still working, and the last time the garage door was closed. This applet also has Webhook as the trigger and Gmail as the action. Call the Webhook event name "door_monitor_active". Put in the desired email(s) for the Gmail action and fill out the Subject and Body as shown below:

5. (Optional) If using Adafruit IO, set up and account at https://io.adafruit.com/. Record your username and Adafruit IO key for later use. Add a feed called "garage-door" to your Adafruit IO account.

6. Solder together your garage door monitor, install it in your garage, and plug it in. If using an OLED display, connect display to the I2C headers using 4" female-female jumper wires, taking special care to match the 3V3 and GND on the display to the board. Swapping 3V3 and GND will fry your OLED.

   • Note #1: Take care to solder the RGB LED pins in the correct order. The longest pin is the common anode, which should be soldered in the hole second from the left, where the NodeMCU is on the left side of the board. The LED case also has a flat edge, which should match the flat edge shown on the board silkscreen.
   • Note #2: If you happen to have one of the old PCBs that does not include a 10K resistor on the front of the PCB, you will need to solder a 10K pull-up resistor on the back of the PCB as pictured here. The PCB pictured on this page above is the old design, with only three resistors on the front, whereas the new PCB has four resistors on the front.

7. Print out a case on a 3D printer, or design your own. Two case designs are provided in the "cases" folder. Assemble case and electronics.

8. Flash software to ESP8266 using a micro-USB cable. This can be done one of two ways: a) Use the compiled .bin files included in the repository, or b) compile and flash the firmware using the Arduino IDE. I have included two different compiled version. The file monitor_with_aio.bin should be used if you wish to log the garage door status using Adafruit IO. The file monitor_without_aio.bin is used if you do not wish to log the status. Both support the IFTTT web service to email and text message you. Both also support the OLED screen. If using one of these files, I recommend using esptool at https://github.com/espressif/esptool to flash the esp8266. After installing esptool, the following line is used to flash the ESP8266:

   esptool.py --port COM6 write_flash 0x0000 monitor_without_aio.bin

   where COM6 should be replaced by whatever com port your device is plugged into. (In Windows, this is discoverable using the Device Monitor.)

   If compiling and flashing using the Arduino IDE, please see the Special Instructions for Compiling and Flashing Firmware Using Arduino IDE at the end of this Readme file.

9. Power garage door monitor using a 5V micro-USB power supply. When powered for the first time, the monitor will create a WiFi access point called GARAGE_DOOR. Look for a WiFi network called GARAGE_DOOR on your computer, tablet, or phone and connect to it (default password is PASSWORD, which can be modified in the source code). (If you don't see one within 30 seconds, it may need to have its settings reset. Hold down the button for 5 seconds and then cycle the power.) Your web browser may automatically open up a web page at 192.168.4.1. If not, connect to this IP address in a browser. The web page will appear as shown below. Press "Configure WiFi" and enter in your SSID and password credentials as shown below. Add the IFTTT API_KEY that you recorded from IFTTT. Enter in your time zone as indicated, and whether you wish to have the monitor automatically adjust for daylight savings time using US DST rules. (Enter Y even if it is not currently DST as it will use the date to determine when to adust.) If using the Adafruit IO option, you will also see an entry for Adafruit IO username and key. Press "save" and the garage door monitor will automatically connect to your WiFi network.

10. Install in your garage and enjoy!

The LED will be red at turn-on, and will change to green once it has connected to WiFi and synced with NIST time. When the garage door is shut, the light will remain green. If open, it will change to magenta for 15 minutes, and will then change to red after it has sent out its first email. Pressing the tactile button will cause the light to blink blue, and the monitor will not send any emails for 2 hours, or whenever the button is pushed again, which ever comes first. Any failure to connect to WiFi will cause the monitor to blink red until it is able to reconnect.

The OLED will automatically turn off after five minutes of inactivity while the garage door is closed. This is to prevent OLED burn-in. This time can be extended by changing the OLED_TIMEOUT duration in the code.

If you ever wish to reset the SSID credentials, IFTTT key, or other settings, press the button for 5 seconds and power cycle. Follow instructions

Special Instructions for Compiling and Flashing Firmware Using Arduino IDE

1. Configure Arduino IDE
2. Install Arduino IDE 1.8.15 (or later) from arduino.cc
3. Open File>Preferences, and enter the following URL into "Additional Board Manager URLs": http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
4. Open Tools>Board>Board Manager and install the esp8266 boards. I am currently using v3.0.2, but later versions should also work.
5. In the Tools menu, configure Board: NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module), CPU Frequency: 80 MHz, Upload Speed: 115200.
6. (Optional) If logging is desired, uncomment #define ADAFRUIT_IO and
7. Install the following libraries. I have indicated which versions I am currently using, though in most cases later versions should work: NTPClient (3.2.0), WiFi (1.2.7), WiFiManager (2.0.3-alpha), Time (1.6.1), Timezone (1.2.4), ArduinoJson (6.8.3), Adafruit_MQTT (2.4.2), Adafruit_GFX (1.10.10), and Adafruit_SSD1306 (2.4.6). All of these libraries are added through the Library Manager (Sketch > Include Library > Manage Libraries).
8. If not using an OLED display, you can comment out the line #define OLED_DISPLAY in the sketch. Otherwise, make sure the libraries Adafruit_GFX and Adafruit_SSD1306 are installed.
9. Connect the NodeMCU board to your computer using a micro USB cable, and set Tools>Port to the new port that appears. Your computer should automatically install the driver, but if it does not, you may need to manually download and install the CP2102 driver from http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/pages/usbtouartbridgevcpdrivers.aspx.
10. Press the Upload button to compile the sketch and upload to the NodeMCU. The most common reason for failing to compile are an selecting the wrong board or not installing all the required libraries.