ohd - (OverHeadDoor) Garage Door Monitor

It is now June, 2023. DoorPi, which runs ohd, has been chugging along out there in the garage since 2015 with minimal intervention. It's still running Raspbian Buster, and quite frankly, I'm taking a 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach at this point.

v2.2.0 adds camera recording when the door opens, which I should have done some time ago. It was the addition of another Pi cam in the garage that prompted it. Works great. The cameras are running into AgentDVR on a Ubuntu machine, and have no real connection to ohd other than the fact that we turn recording on and off under certain circumstances.

History

For decades, I wanted a simple way to keep track of whether my garage door was open or closed.
I started this project in 2015 and it does exactly what I need. The project eventually morphed into a component of what I have come to call my PiNet, a network of Raspberry Pi's that perform various useful functions around my property.

Primarily monitors and notifies me of the open/close status of the Garage Door.

'ohd' monitors specified GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi and responds based on changes to the status of those pins. It sends email (or SMS) messages to numbers in its config file.

Added a standard motion detector to the front porch. 'ohd' monitors that now.

In November of 2019 I added a PIR motion detector to my front porch. It was natural to let ohd handle the monitoring of its status. When that motion detector is tripped, ohd rings my doorbell rings three times, then sends notification to the configured emails/SMS gateways, and Agent DVR (used to be Zoneminder) is told to record video for the configured length of time.

In 2022 I replaced Zoneminder with another open source program called Agent DVR. It significantly simplifies things.

Simple hardware requirements

The Pi is a 3 Model B+, and the schematic diagram details which pins do what. I also added a real-time clock module and an Uninterruptable Power Supply to keep it online and on time. The UPS is a home-brew job with a 12V sealed battery that powers a DROK 12V to 5V buck converter. That converter powers the Pi. Works like a champ.

I use a typical magnetic reed switch for the door.

I re-used a square green pushbutton switch I salvaged off an old PC case as my ByPass button.
This button has a built-in LED which lights up when the ByPass is engaged. The ByPass function allows me to keep the garage door open while I'm working in there without getting notified every minute.

Soft Bypass function

The Soft Bypass function allows me to over-ride the status of the hardware bypass switch when needed. When Soft Bypass is engaged, the bypass button's LED flashes to remind me Soft Bypass mode is enabled.

Soft Bypass is enabled and disabled through the browser interface provided by all.py, which runs on Brilliant, a i3 Ubuntu machine in my office. None of this is required to use ohd, but it is nice.

Email and SMS notifications

ohd uses Gmail to communicate with the outside world. I created an account just for this Pi, and it sends emails to a specified list of recipients when the status of the door or ByPass switch changes. Notifications can also be sent by SMS by using the SMS gateway address of the cell service provider. On Verizon, for example, ohd would send an email to 'mycellnumber@vzwpix.com'. That gets translated to SMS and shows up on my phone like any other text.

ohd also can receive instructions by email. There have been times when the door was opened by someone who then failed to press the bypass button. Like when we had flooring contractors working at our house. We could not reach them, but I was able to send a "quiet" message to the Pi's Gmail address, and ohd retrieved that and stopped sending 'door open' notifications. Very handy. Currently this is the only command ohd acts on.

I provided some instructions to go from a brand new Pi to a functioning ohd system. The normal caveats apply . . . your mileage may vary.

License

drgerg/ohd

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