Search for garage door open sensor in Topics

Ok, so I've about had it with my garage door opener. It's supposed to sense when objects are underneath it and retract from closing, but it doesn't. I want to replace it, please recommend me an option that actually works. I have two kids and they leave their toys all over, that door would eventually either wreck their toys or worse, hurt my kids. Thanks in advance!

I would like to install a light when my garage door is opening (it's an automated door). This light would be useful for me to actually see how to reverse my car in the garage. Does anybody know what components I should use? I would like to have the light trigger when the garage motor switches on and then keep on running for some minutes after it finishes. I have some knowledge in electronics and electricity. Also what would be cool is if the light only switches on when it's dark.?

I have an Arduino Yun with a Seeed Relay Shield and trying to create a garage door opener.  I have tried just about every sketch available but no luck.  It seems the sketches are for Arduino Uno boards with Ethernet Shields.  I tried that but was unable to establish network connectivity with a W5200 Seeed Ethernet Shield on an Arduino Uno (that's why I went with the Yun).  I am new to this and would appreciate any advice or help.

I use the flashing / steady sensor light to guide me when I am in the correct parked position to avoid hitting the front wall. But I have to strain to see the light in my passenger side mirror. I want to install a small LED light on the front wall to repeat with the sensor light to make it easier to park. Any ideas folks?

I believe it is an infrared sensor with two wires on each. I have wired them to a 120V plug and the LEDs on them turn on and my motor spins slightly (probably just because it is a 120V motor and it's not getting enough electricity) but I try to line up the sensors and they do nothing different even when crossed. What I want to happen is for the motor to remain off until the beam is crossed. Once crossed I want it to spin and to keep spinning until I disconnect it. I would really like to put an alarm on it so when crossed an alarm goes off. Does anyone know the additional things I need and how to wire them? Thanks

Hi there, I have an automatic garage. But sometimes i forget to close it and it stays open all night. Apart from someone being able to steal stuff, it would also allow an intruder into the house while we are asleep! So what I am looking to do is whenever the door is open, that a light inside the house turns on. My garage door is a panel lift door. My initial thought was to use alarm sensors. One on the wall and one on the door. If the sensors are not near each other, a light in the house should turn on. The serial circuit would look something like the following. GarageDoor > GarageDoorSensor > Less than an inch of air/space > WallFixedSensor > Wire > CentralLogicDeviceWithBattery > Wire > TinyLight/Led. The hardest bit would be what I have called the CentralLogicDeviceWithBattery. I would like to know what parts i would need and which part connects to which part. thank you

I have the bad habit of leaving my garage door open sometimes. To come home with your garage wide open is pretty scary. So I was thinking of this idea...  The garage automatically closes after 5 minutes. But that's pretty annoying so I figured you could install a switch underneath the garage door opener that will leave the garage door open. Any ideas on how this could be done or more suggestions? Thanks!

Hi, i was thinking of how to make my own garage door opener circuit. To make it simple, im just using a DC motor for my gates and powering using relay.. Any idea on the circuitries??

I have a one car garage door I'm installing a garage door opener to. The problem is the manufacturer of the door doesn't guarantee the vertical aluminum center bar on the top panel of the door won't bend or break during the operation of the garage door opener. How can I brace the L-shaped aluminum bar to take the stress of the door being automatically lifted without warping the bar or the top panel of the door? There is no information listed on the garage door manufacturer's website.

I want to be able to build a DIY garage Door warning sensor that is wireless and will give me a warning LED light when door is open.

Hello there, I have been asked to try to repair a malfunctioning garage door opener. The man who handed them to me said all of the modules work for a few weeks, then suddenly stop working. I opened them, looking for any burnt component, dry solder joints, tested relays in search of a stuck one, but could find nothing. I tested them at home, and they all reliably clicked their relay on and off, as expected. So the question is, what would cause ordinary garage door openers to fail? I thought about a bad powerline (circuits are 50's era in his building, and have never been redone), but have no means to check it. In the same direction, I was looking for a different model garage door opener, and only found two alternatives: one is the run-of-the-mill SkyLink stuff, expensive, reasonably secure, the other is the dirt cheap Chinese-made remotes with no hint about security. Since this is Instructables, I looked for garage door opener projects, but most are so-called "smart" and need a reliable Internet access, both on the smartphone and on the receiver module. Since this is a multi-tenant building and my country is known to be among the most expensive for internet access 1. there's no easily accessible Internet in the garage 2. drivers can't be assumed to have a smartphone and even if they do, 3. Internet access on a cell phone is extremely expensive. The other question would then be: have any of the community members here saw a garage door opener that would: 1- only need easy-to-make RF remotes? 2- be at least as secure as the original SkyLink? 3- require no Internet access?

I know the remote control is working as when I push the open/close button I can go on the main cct. board and see the signal on pin 14 of the LM2902. I can also trace the signal to pin 12 of the micro. The micro should do several things,  check whether the door is open or closed, apply power to the relay motor, apply power to the relay motor to open or close the door. The controller works in the manual mode ok, i.e. I can open or close the door, turn on or off the light. It is very difficult to trace the circuit board as it has a ground plane on the top of the board and SM components on the bottom side of the board. I am unsure of two things, first the signal going to the micio is about 1 Vpk-pk and not the normal logic level or 0 and 5v, but if this input to the micro is set as an analog signal then level may not be an issue. Secondly I cannot determine what output pins on the micro control the power relays as it is almost impossible to trace the cct.    Anyway any help would be greatly appreciated ... thanks in advance and take care ...Vic

I would like to be able to send my Arduino a text from my iphone that when the Arduino receives it, it will move a servo that will push the garage door opener button. I am new to this and have tried searching on the internet, but all that I have found is complicated devices that don't completely work with my situation. I have an iPhone 5 and an Arduino Uno **Edit** I was looking at getting an Ethernet shield but I was hoping that I could find a wifi shield that does the same thing without a Ethernet cable. Does that exist?

I was hoping to be able to start my WiFi Garage door opener, but I then realized (Well Adafruit told me (http://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t;=44626&p;=225993#p225993)) that their WiFi shield doesn't accept incoming connections :(. They did, however, say that I could use it to set up a UDP server and then send a UDP packet from my phone. Only problem is, I don't know what a UDP server is, or what UDP stands for, as I am extremely new to electronics. My question is, how would I go about doing something like this? Should I just scrap the Adafruit route or is it still relatively simple to do it this way. I am open to all ideas and I don't mind buying another WiFi chip if need be.

I took our Genie garage door opener apart [the light wasn't working and I read where that was probably caused by the 555 timer] and thought I'd carefully drawn a schematic before doing so, but I failed to label where the 3 wires from the receiver connect to the terminal block on the main unit, and also where the 3 wires from the main unit connect to the terminal block. Regardless, I have the unit back together and when the remote is pressed the receiver relay clicks, but that's the only thing that happens. I'm fairly certain the problem lies with a component on the internal motor controller board. And NO ONE gives out this kind of information. I can't even find it for sale !! But I'll be derned if I'm going to pay $50 for a new controller board when I'm almost 100% certain the problem is a $.59 diode or the like. Plus, I like a challenge and hate getting beat. Any and all help would be very much appreciated. Possibly I could find someone who has the same model unit and they could diagram theirs for me, possibly someone knows where to obtain the real thing. Thanks !!

Backstory (feel free to skip) So, my grandparents live in an apartment building and they have to get a daily visit by a nurse for a condition grandma has (it's not going to get away till she passes, so it's not a short-term issue). The apt. building has a big parking lot closed by a remote controlled gate that can only be opened with the transmitter -the tiny one you hook to your keychain-. The nurse gets there by car and it is not possible to leave it on the side of the road so my grandfather is forced to go out, get to the ground floor, walk around the building and open the gate with the remote, this is really time-wasteful so I tried opening the gate from the balcony but the transmitter hasn't got nearly enough juice toget the signal to the receiver, on top of the fact that they're on the wrong side of the building. End Backstory So, I was set on buying something AC powered, with a seriously extended range, that might send the signal there, but could not find anything.  Could any of you educate me on ho to build / mod something like that? thank you all in advance

We installed a garage roller door ourselves. However the upper end of the garage roller door is not straight. The middle part of the upper end is bulging out and lower than the two ends that is attach to the two end wheels. It works fine manually. However when we installed the electrical automatic opener. It works on opering the garage door, but when we try to close the door, the door unroll on the shrift instead of coming down. Please let us know what is wrong. Is it the tension of the spring? What is the easiest way to fix it?

Im making a model of roller door garage opening system and will be using the following componentsmotor - http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=YG2730&keywords;=motor&form;=KEYWORDinterrupter - http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=ZD1901&keywords;=interrupter&form;=KEYWORDarduino - L293dI need help inorder to connect the motor and interrupter to the arduino which should run the motor in both directions. Basically the motor should rotate the shaft in both directions to open and close the garage door, the purpose of interrupter is the let the motor know that the door is closed or open and i need suggestions as to what i should be using as sensor which could detect any object interrupting the closing of the door and stop the motor. If you suggest me a sensor please also tell me how to connect that sensor to the arduino

Not looking for an automatic door such as where the dog's RFID gives auto entry, but looking for a way to keep my dogs in my house when I leave via my car in the garage. Looking for some type of remote controlled thingamajig to keep their doggy door closed or secured while I'm in my car pulling out of the garage, and then once my garage door is closed give them access to the garage. Only a problem when I leave for the day, when I return at night they're so happy to see me they're not in a mood to go run off when the garage door opens.

I love this site, and have been totally inspired by many of the projects I see on here, thank you to everyone who takes the time to post their work here. I'm trying to get into my first arduino project and am just looking for some help getting started.  Like many other people, my wife/kids (never me) tend to leave the garage door open, and I was looking for an inexpensive way to build a monitor, using an arduino board. Joe's garage monitor seems really great (https://www.instructables.com/id/Garage-Monitor-3001/#step1), but the post is a little old, and some of the parts listed do not look like they are available anymore. And it may be too much, I can connect this sensor to my home network (since my garage is next to my home's boiler room where all my networking is wired to). So basically I am thinking of the magentic sensors (http://www.dinodirect.com/Plastic-Door-Magnetic-Sensor-Alarm-Security-System-MC-31.html) on the grage door to indicate open/closed, which are only a few dollars, and then somehow connecting that to an arduino board, and then patch the board to my home network where I can log the status to a database. any help with suggestions for an inexpensive board to get started, is greatly appreciated, thanks!

I am installing a cyclone dust collector in my workshop, and I want to make a sensor that will determine when my dust bin is full so that the chips and dust won't overflow into the filters.  I'm thinking garage door sensors could be blocked by sawdust rising into the transparent flex hose between the cyclone and bin, but I'm not sure how they work.  I would use them to turn on a warning light and turn off the dust collector.  Any ideas?  I'm good with tinkering and basic electricity, but am stuck trying to figure this out.

No time and no pics for a proper Instructable, so I just put out some word of warning ;) Around here bad people take advantage of the fact that a lot of new houses have the garage right next to the house. With these you usually also get a door so when you park your car you don't have to get out of the garage again. All controlled by the press of a button on the remote... Some fancy guys got a device working similar to the IM-ME Open Sesame hack a few years back. But unlike the original author the new guys found ways to make money by providing working "universal garage door openers" on dubious websites. Problem with the new model is that it not only fakes a remote with dip switches but also the newer models with so called "rolling code", "intellicode", "changing code" and so on. The old remotes with dip switches should actually by phased out years ago by any owner who values his stuff... But the new models are still deemed secure and next to impossible to hack - well if you trust the advertisement... How does the code hacking work? The old dip switch models allow for a maximum of just over 4000 different codes and come in just 3 or 4 frequency bands. No real problem for anyone with basic electronic and coding skills to hack these - as shown with Open Sesame. The new models all use a so called rolling code, here the remote and opener are paired through 32 bit of ID code and an encrypted part that changes every time. Both remote and opener calculate the next code once a button was pressed or a code received. To overcome reception problems the base usually calculates the next 256 codes in advance - and that is the entry point for bad boys. The illegal device scrambles the frequency detected while storing the code received by the orignal remote. As the door did not open the owner will try to press the button again. Still scrambled to opener does nothing - until the device sends out the first recorded code! Now the owner can drive in and is happy. Of course he still needs to close the garage - again all is scrambled and the code stored as before. You see where this is going.... It is even possible to set the amount of required tries to capture, so in theory a bad guy could get the next 10 or codes in advance for use once the owner is gone out... Worst thing however is that these illegal devices not only open garage doors but also cars as a lot of them use similar systems for their remotes - up to the point of starting the car with it. Took me only 2 hours with Google translate to find a website outside the usual search results that offers these "gadgets", along with WiFi and cell phone jammers, credit card copy devices and more things I don't want know about... What can you do to protect yourself? First check what type of remote your system uses - if there are DIP Switches than replace the remote system or the entire device in favour for something more secure. If you already have a rolling code model that you are far better off but sadly no longer totally safe here. A lost remote should not only be replaced but the old one removed from the system as well - you never know if you just lost it or someone took your remote ;) Alternatives exist, especially if you are not afraid of doing some open heart surgery on the electronics of a garage door opener. You can add a WiFi module and use your mobile phone to open the garage - search Google if you like the idea ;) Another very neat way is using a second transmitter that keeps the relay for activating the opener from working. This can be anything from a BT module paired with your phone or cars BT system over a keycard to numberplate recognition cams. A good system also allows for a "holiday mode" or similar. Here you can set this mode with one remote until you deactivate it with the same remote the system will not react to anything. Great if you leave the house for more than a day or two... As a last resort you can always get a big and angry dog to sleep in your garage.... What if you are renting or a bit limited with the electronics and soldering skills? Not all is lost if you can accept a second remote for added safety. These days you can get plug in converters for your mains voltage outlets that work with a remote control. Unless they use Infra Red for this they are great to disable your opener. Simply plug it in where the power cord for the opener is and then plug the cord into it as well ;) Now you can fully shut off the opener with the press of a button and only if the power outlet is switched on the opener will work. If in doubt you can use a double outlet adapter an extension cord and a night light to indicate wether or not the opener has power. Ok, and what about the door lading from the garage into the house? Well, of course keep it locked and if you are home also keep it locked. At least this way you have some extra time in case someone tries to enter through your garage while you are sleeping ;)

I have a dog door (http://www.hartleyglass.com.au/images/pet-door/pet-door3.png) but my dog is a bit anxious about opening the door with his head. I can't say that I blame him really. So I want to attached a solar powered device that would open when he is near by. I imagine I would mount it above the black bar, outsize where the is light with the solar panel wedge, attached to the door (see image uploaded).  I don't really know how to go about it.  The major components would be: 1. Solar panel wedge and batter (power source) 2. Proximity sensor (maybe RFID attached to my dogs collar?) 3. Motor (not sure how to detect when the door is opened or closed. etc etc  How does one go about building something like this? Any direction would be great Thanks Wayn

I am looking at hooking up an old photo eye from a garage door to a micro. The end use will be in a device to detect if my dog is about to jump over the fence and take a picture as well as play some audio of me telling him to get down. The problem is that I don't know the correct way to connect the photo eye to the micro. I believe the transmitter site should be powered with 12V, but I would rather know for sure before frying the sensor. My garage door opener doesn't have a port for the photo eyes, so I can't check the outputs on it, but I was hoping someone here might already know, or might investigate their own open. Thanks for any help.

Hi my house sites on top of the garage and has an open stair and hatch doorway into our living toom. Whats the best way of insulating between my garage and room? Ive been told insulating the garage door is a waste of time and i should concentrate on the connecting door but want to know if anyone has any other suggestions that wont mean i have to buy/make a new door. thanks Mark

I thought this might be a great prank. I was wondering if a simple motion detector wired up to the remote transceiver would work?

It would be really handy to be able to make or buy a simple switch that would turn a device on when your cellphone is within range. You could use it to activate a garage door. Or to turn an electric door lock. Or to remote start a car. The possibilities are.... well... Numerous. IF somebody made a device through one of the online prototypers, I would pay 50+ bucks for one of these.

I am thinking of using a garage door sensor to tell if the car is there, and activate and LED in my house. I don't know if I can make it work for this purpose. Does anybody have any ideas? 

I have 3 single, older, traditional wood-sided garage doors. I am making a room out of the garage and, fixing 2 doors, but still want 1 door to open. Each door is 8'Wx7'H with 5" horizontal T&G siding. I planned to add some 24"x14" wood window sashes across the top, add insulation and some kind of thin paneling, doorskin or such to the back side and trim out the front side with 1/2" x 3" redwood. The fixed doors are no real issue, but what I'm puzzling about is how to make one door openable, but yet weatherized, and without all the traditional opening hardware showing inside. The windows & their framing, the trim, and  back panels will add weight, maybe alot. I want to remove all the exsisting spring hardware, so it looks like a room inside and not a garage. I thought about some kind of block & tackle, or manual gears to lift the door, but I just don't know. Also, I want to keep the doors appearing on the outside like regular doors, but modernized, and all 3 the same. Any ideas, (wild or otherwise, I'm open) to lift and open a door like this? I considered remaking the doors into carriage doors, but my driveway is sloped, so that could be a problem for rollers and any type of weatherproofing. I wanted to avoid completely remaking the doors any more than I already am. Thanks for any ideas.

This summer I will rebuild the front of my house.and i got the idea that my Husqvarna 220 will also have its own garage. With a real garage door.But do not know how to solve it properly, I can set the mower to run on specific time and days, so that the door opens 1min before will start and close 3 min later. All god for now. i will using a smart plug to control the power the port. now to the problemif the mover need to recharge the port will be closet, how and what can i bulid so it can detect the mover geting close to the port and opens? and close when its recharinga + is i can control the port using Home assistent to just open and close. Regard

 I have a garage opener, commercial grade that opened a wire "gate" across my lane to deter people from driving up to my house. It has a metal wheel welded onto it to wind the cable and it's in a little hut (gatehouse) to keep it from the weather. I have a few remotes for it. Now that I have moved, what can I do with this $500 garage door opener? I will take a photo next time I'm over there.

I want to turn a garage door opener into a remote relay because i have a million and one uses for it, but when the sensor senses the signal, it activates the internal relay for a second or two, i want to know if or how i can turn that into a toggle output so when i press the button it turns the rely on if it's off and vice versa. if i need to mod the receiver circuit that's great, but i also plan on using this for a proximity sensor: http://www.ikalogic.com/ir_prox_sensors.phpand if anyone can tell me how to use a 4013 or something like that to do this, i can kill 2 birds with one stone. thanks in advance!

Hi, I recently started keeping my own chickens and have really enjoyed the whole experience. The chickens were all really friendly and provided hours of amusement. Until a few weeks ago I had 4 of our feather friends in a nice Coop. That was fine until one night, for the first time ever, we forgot to close the door to the coop. Unfortunatley the fantastic Mr Fox must have been casing the joint for some time and siezed his opportunity. Three of the chickens were nowhere to be seen, the fourth lay dead under our rhubarb. So why am I telling you all this sad tale? well, I have stumbled accross a solution to this ever happening again. On Ebay I can purchase a 'VSB Automatic door opener', but it'll cost about £100. This is also not ideal as by current door for the coop opens horizontally not vertically, which would mean replacing the door. I'm also concerned that the light unit will be underneath a roof with this design, so it may close prematurely, leaving the chickens trapped in the yard. I'd like to have a go at making my own automatic closer for the coop, possibly solar powered (with a rechargeable battery) that could be mounted to the side of the coop. I don't mind adapting the door to make a vertical opener, if that makes the project easier. The specs for the bought units are: Compact geared motor with steel gears ensuring extremely long life. Battery life now 3 to 4 years with an HS sliding gate or 2 years with a 1.5-kg sliding gate featuring a 50-cm lift. Dorkeeper operates considerably more quietly now. Thanks to 40-kg breaking strength, the rope can hardly break any more. Electronic shutdown of motor within one second when the sliding gate is blocked.Once the blockage is removed, the sliding gate will be opened within three minutes. The strain on the batteries is virtually negligible. Tensile force: 200 g to to 3 kg, with idler UR on the sliding gate (pulley) 6 kg. Does anyone have an ideas how to make something suitable/similar? I have included photo's of the coop showin the current method for closing (Metal foding arm)

We have a hidden driveway into our rental property, blocked by a large electronic gate.  Need something to detect a vehicle in the drive (either a motion sensor or a touchpad type thing?) that will make, for example, a doorbell ring in the house, and a viewing camera that can handle tropical rains, that will show up on something like a baby monitor inside the home.  The gate has two remotes, rather cumbersome and easily misplaced.  We would prefer to keep these in the two vehicles and have a button or three in the house and garage, to enable us to activate the gate opening without having to go get the remote from the car.  I would like some ideas, plans etc as although I have some electronics knowledge I need someone who has perhaps already built something like this. Any ideas, anyone?

I need to activate a garage door opener  with temp control. Opener uses momentary switches   There is a solarium on the out side of my shop garage door, When the temp between the door and the solarium reaches +/- 90 degrees  the door would open and +/-60 degrees the door would shut. Because the opener needs momentary contacts a regular thermostat  will not work. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated..

My chickens are really good to me, they are keen to expore my garden when the sun comes up, then put themselves away at night.The trouble is, one night I forgot to close the door into the coop and they all got eaten by a fox.I've seen automatic opening/closing devices for sale, but they're really expensive.An example of these devices can be found on http://www.axt-electronic.de/index1.htmAny help greatly appreciated.

I've seen a couple different examples of re-purposing things like wireless doorbell ringers or other devices to activate a door look solenoid but i don't want to carry any more stuff in my pockets.Ii was wondering if it's possible to use a car fob to do the same thing? i would love to map the door lock button on my car fob to unlock my front door and vice versa for the lock button.  I know for garage door openers in your car you can hold down the OEM remote and it syncs the signal not sure if there is a way to do this with my car fob.

Hi guys,  im looking to put an automatic door on my coop.i need help with the wiring, its going to be a 12V DC board with light sensors and a DC motor with a planetarium gears. i have already have a power source in my coop. 

I have a difficult entrance into garage and want to use an orange 9-33v DC LED as a marker light when the garage door is opened. I would like to be able to connect the marker LED to the 3.3v LED that comes on when the garage door is opened. This is on a timer, so I envisage both the garage door LED and the marker LED switching on/off when the remote is activated.

I think everyone should know about this. Its soo easy, never spend more then $10 on a wireless remote for any gadget! www.instructables.com/id/Super-Cheap-and-Easy-Wireless-Remote-Shutter-under/ 

I'd like to build a simple (if that's possible) light in my front hall that will turn ON when I open my front door, and stay on for 15 seconds (I want it to turn off by itself so I don't have to walk back through my apartment to turn it off manually). I thought about using the light sensor from a nightlight because every time I open my front door light pours in from the main hallway; I thought it would be cheaper than a motion detector. Can anyone help with the sensor ,or with the timing

I have an idea that I would need some help with.Have thought to control a door that opens with an ir sensor.I will need 2 pieces one outside the gate and one inside. I think I can solve that bit myself, the problem is that the motor to the gate is 230 volts. How can I control it via arudion and IR sensor

Ok I need some help. I am a trail steward on a local mountain bike trail. We want to make a counter so we can find out how many folks are using the trail. I thouhgt I had a good idea, but can't seem to make it work. I have access to a bunch of garge door photo sensors(neighbors a garage door tech), and a bunch of thoes pocket pedometers(got them from a manager of a Mcdonalds when they stopped giving them out). I have figured out how to make the pocket counters work as just plain counters thanks to another instructable (remove hammer, wire across with a switch or relay...). What I have not been able to figure out is how to use the garage door sensors to make the circuit work. All I need is for the circuit to make a relay close to act as the switch for the counter. I was able to do it with an LED emmiter and detector and it's circuit, but for soome reason I guess the garage door sensors have something inside their glued box that won't let it work with the circuit. Any ideas?

Hey all, I was recently given a free garage door opener, and I was wondering, Is there anything fun or interesting I could do to/with it? Here is a picture or two http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn140/CairnisReed/IMGP0992.jpg?t=1260037889 http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn140/CairnisReed/IMGP0993.jpg?t=1260037888 (Rat Trap is to Makeshift 'Keep Out Of Box' as Garage door opener is to...?) Thanks

Soon I'm going to move into a building which shares living quarters with a garage. I'd like to rig up some sort of relay-triggering device that opens a nicely sealed set of vents (one intake, one output) and activates a fan exhausting garage air  - one that activates the minute I open the garage door, and then continues exhausting fumes for a few minutes after I drive the car away (and close the garage door). After those couple of minutes, the fan would stop, and the vents seal shut Due to the "lay of the land" (garage right off a busy road, with very short hidden driveway) I will be backing the car in, so exhaust gases will be concentrated at the back of the garage (close to living areas) - rather than near the open garage door. And as my car has a turbocharger, I often need to let it idle for a minute or two ( to let the turbo cool down) before turning it off to park. So it would be most useful to be expelling those exhaust fumes out of the garage! The question is - what's really the most simple and cost-effective platform for this kind of a system? Could a 555 timer, a few discrete components and some relays do the job elegantly? Or am I better off just diving into Arduino-Land?? Any related ideas (solenoid-closed vents, efficient fans, ducting through walls, etc ) that are especially thrifty - would also be greatly appreciated!!!

I need to hear the front door open from quite a way away and I can't really run wires all the way. The signal would need to travel wirelessly from the front door of my business to the buzzer at the other end of the premises.I can't seem to buy a pre-made version nor a kit for this anywhere! Would there be a way I could use a kit with a reed switch ie magnetic sensor on the door but somehow wire it to a transmitter instead of a buzzer? Then I'd need a receiver connected to a buzzer I suppose.  I've no idea really where to start.

Hi all i have scoured the site but cant seem to find a project that i need, and would therefore benefit from any help and advice on how to build an light sensitive automatic door opener for our chicken coop. it seems an obvious project to me,, hopefully one not too hard that i can do with your help. we have a barn thats too far away from the electricity, so it needs to be self powered by battery. i can look into trickle carging the battery by solar seperatley i am sure on the site. but, the wife is sick of having to go each night and shut the chucks in to keep them safe from the fox, and then open up every morning. we were wondering if we could use a standard light sensor you find on the cheap security lights at the DIY store, that would trigger some kind of motor or catch etc to slide or raise a door. then if possible, to do the opposite when the morning comes. if the LUX sensor is not possible, then maybe on a timer, or even posibly remote. i need help and advice on the whole thing, as i have no idea on what type of mote, (if i need a motor at all) i need, will it burn out if it has power all the time?, how to stop it? loads of questions i cant even think of support with your answer would be appreciated. thanks in advance