Anybody interested in using apex to open your garage door?

[woochi]

Let me know if I should post the walk through and code

 

[FarmerTy]

That's a pretty interesting use of it. I'm game. Would love to see the code and walkthrough.

 

[woochi]

That's a pretty interesting use of it. I'm game. Would love to see the code and walkthrough.

sounds good I'll start making one

 

[FarmerTy]

sounds good I'll start making one

You're the man! [emoji106]

 

[Roy 9121]

Seems like an awfully expensive garage door opener. And i usually don't let my fish drive my car.

 

[woochi]

Genie Remote Chamberlain Remote
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First thing you want to do is open remote and remove your battery.
Then open the remote up, most pop apart with a coin on the side.
You will then want to locate the button terminals under the button you use to open your garage door.
In the genie picture you will see two half round terminals that have legs, if these terminal were to touch each other it will be the same as if you pushed the button.
The plan is to use a 12 volt relay to make a connection between those terminals and powering that relay with a power supply which will be connected to an outlet on your apex.







A closer look of what it should look like after soldering .
You can solder anywhere on the genies half circles as long as you don't have them touching , it was a tiny area but not to bad
the chamberlain has actual micro switches which are a little bigger in size and easier to solder , each switch on the chamberlain has 4 pins
and you will only use two of them. if you look close you can see i used the top and bottom polls on the right side of the switch.
(wire colors have no meaning in this parts i must add, its just what i had at hand)
Once you have soldered your two wires in place your now ready to test .

Insert battery back into the remote
Then just touch the ends of the wires together for a second and your door should open, or close. or pause while in motion just like a normal remote
if this part worked than your ready for the next step.






Protect your connections! liquid electrical tape or hot glue works great. cover the wires and goop it in there good


I chose to not cut the key pad to make room for the wires, instead i covered the opening with electrical tape



Next you will need a 12v power supply and a 12 volt relay
the third picture shows the remote wires already connected to terminals 30 and 87,



You can use a multimeter to dectect which wire on the power supply is positive and negative

with the power supply plugged into the wall. touch the probe ends onto the wires
you can see if the first picture i have -13.8 volts, this means my red probe is touching the negative wire on the power supply.
mark your wire so you will know.



now connect the negative wire from your power supply to terminal 85
and the positive wire to terminal 86.



at this point if you put the power supply in the wall you will open your garage door. it will happen instantly so no need to leave plugged it.
play around with it as much as you want at this point because you just finished the hard part !




This portion shows two ways to operate the power supply via your apex


Method 1, No programing needed

You will need a spare outlet for the power supply, make sure outlet is off and go ahead and plug in your power supply.
If you choose to do this method , all you need to do is switch the outlet to on for about 5 seconds and then back off and you should have
successfully opened or closed your garage door via all things internet.


Method 2, Advanced programing

For this method you will use one of your feed modes




go into the old apex dash board and under configurations tab select Misc setup and change the feed timer you selected to 1 minute, then save changes and close

Next you will need to make a virtual outlet, i wont show that here but there is a lot of info on the web for creating one.

here is the programing for the virtual outlet

Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If FeedD 000 Then ON


Now the programing for the outlet your power supply is plugged into

Fallback OFF
Set OFF
OSC 000:00/000:02/000:59 Then ON
If Outlet VirtGarage = OFF Then OFF



At this point if you hit the feed button that you chose for this, your garge will open within 60 seconds. this is the best if have come up with so far, any tips are welcome!

This part is optional but recommend

Wiring and paddle switch to your garage door is a very smart and easy idea if you have free ports on your breakout box ,
Simply put you can set an alarm to notify you of said doors status!

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions feel free to ask

 

[woochi]

That's a pretty interesting use of it. I'm game. Would love to see the code and walkthrough.

here you go

 

[FarmerTy]

Wow! Great writeup! I might try this in my new house I'll be moving into in the next couple of weeks!

Thanks for putting this together!

 

[woochi]

Wow! Great writeup! I might try this in my new house I'll be moving into in the next couple of weeks!

Thanks for putting this together!

You're welcome, I'm sure some people were wondering why not just get a Wi-Fi enabled garage door opener which I've had those in the past and their extremely finicky with maintaining a connection almost to the point of being pointless LOL also this it's too easy to do if you already own an apex you basically have the coolest computer around so why not. You also should be able to do the same method for locking and unlocking the garage door opener if you have that style option on the keypad in the garage I still have to look at it but it should be easy

 

[recess62]

When I first read the title I thought it was a joke