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Looking for advice/instruction for building garage door closer project

I thought up an idea to hookup a timer to my garage door to ensure that it is closed by 10pm each night. Since I have zero electronics experience I figured this might be a good project to learn some basic skill with for fun. I picked up a couple of Forest M. Mims books but realized quickly I'm over my head as to now to decide what circuits I would need; but, I didn't want to give up too easily and I'm hoping folks here would enjoy helping me out.

The first phase of project as I envisioned it would include:

1) a timer 2) the garage door transmitter 3) photo sensor to determine if the door was up or down

The McGyver in me wanted to buy an inexpensive battery operated travel alarm clock for the timer piece thinking that I wouldn't have to construct a timer and interface. My thought was to tap the buzzer leads to determine when the timer went off to actuate the "closer" circuit. Otherwise, there is an example of building a 24 hour timer in the Mims book that I could use.

Before getting to far into things my initial questions are:

1) could I use the travel alarm clock as described? 2) how do I interface the timer (either bought or homebuilt) to the switch on the garage door transmitter?

For question #2 I assume that I can carefully unsolder the push button on the remote transmitter and wire it to some sort of transistor type switch or relay. Could someone describe some possibilities and hold I might actually get it connected?

As far as the door open/close sensor goes I'm assuming it's straight forward and that it would interface to the circuit with via an AND gate. I'll look into that later.

Anyway, thanks for your time and your responses....

Mark.

Reply to
mjohnson
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McGyver! A hero to all hobbyists...

Most garage door mechanisms have a manual override button. You may want to interface to that instead of to the remote. On mine, for example, there is a wire that runs from the unit to the button. I'm assuming the button is normally open. Thus, you could use a little relay to short the two sides of the wire, and thus activate the mechanism.

I can carefully unsolder the push button

It's unlikely that your remote will interface properly to an electronic alarm. You will probably have to measure the voltages and signals, and then design some interfacing circuit. If you make the measurements, and post the results, I'm sure somebody will step up to help you with the design.

Depending on the type of door, you could use a little opto-interrupter, like they use in printers to detect paper. Alternately, some kind of physical switch, even a wire that closes across two contacts, would work.

Sounds like an interesting project. Good luck with it.

--
Regards
 Bob Monsen
Reply to
Bob Monsen

I'd imagine you might get by with a lamp timer in parellel with the wired button in the garage.

Reply to
JeB

Reply to
Dave

Providing there is nothing in the way when it is being closed - eg. car, child etc. You could get a 240V/24h plug-in timer, Bunnings sell 2 of these for $10, connect to a 12V transformer, $15 from an electrical wholesaler and get a 12V ac relay. Connect your N.O. contacts across the manual button and presto!

Cheers.

Reply to
Chris

So to measure the "voltages and signals" at the output of the buzzer would I just set the alarm off and use a multimeter to determine what/if there is any voltage?

Would I do the same with the transmitter -- put a multimeter between the switch and then push the button and see what registers. What kind of numbers should I expect to see? Something above 1 volt but smaller than 5 volts?

Is voltage and signal the same thing or do I need to measure the signal differently.

thanks!

Reply to
mjohnson

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