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Garage Door Opener - Using Aux Switches?

How do you open your garage door today?


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ZipZit

Badlands
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So, there was a thread on garaging your Bronco that got me thinking. What is the best way to deal with a garage door opener?

My current state:
Liftmaster / Chamberlain style garage door opener.
I use a small remote, similiar to this:
Ford Bronco Garage Door Opener - Using Aux Switches? garage door remote sml


It's always bothered me that I have to deal with this thing. I know its a slight worry, that someone would steal the remote from the vehicle when parked downtown, look at my address on registration and use that to break in the house later.

I thought, how cool to be able to use an extra overhead Upfitter and use it to open the garage door. No more remote to deal with, nothing to lose or get stolen?

And I'm a tech engineer geek. How hard would that be?
  • I started looking at circuits to convert a toggled On-Off switch to a trigger a simple pulse output.
  • My thought was to add a 555 timer and a few circuit items to the guts of that remote and mount it in the engine compartment somewhere.
  • The more research I did, the more folks were strongly recommending just using a wifi switchable system.
  • Wifi ? Hmmm...
The one cool thing about wifi is it would be possible to check remotely if the garage door was open. Am I the only person to drive away from home, then 15 minutes later think... wait... did I shut the garage door? That requires the use of my mobile phone but that is ALWAYS with me anyway.

And that got me thinking... er wait a minute.... Ooops.

Ford Bronco Garage Door Opener - Using Aux Switches? garage door opener2


Er, yeah. That's an actual photo of my garage door opener as installed. Big oops.

With that said, I think I'm set with wifi, sigh. At the same time, alternate use of those upfitter switches is just a fun idea. If anybody has alternate ideas for using those switches, or wants to pursue this as a non-wifi design exercise I'm all in. I've spent a whole lot of time as software developer / engineer / Internet of Things engineer. Let's talk!
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IDyeti

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kput

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ZipZit

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I used a combination of MyQ, MyQLite, Android Auto, and Google Assistant to give myself a button on the touch screen that opens and closes my garage. 🤷‍♂️

https://www.bronco6g.com/forum/threads/fun-android-auto-google-assistant-mods.35003/#post-1159838
Funny I was just going thru the Ford Developer libraries to see if that was possible. My one concern, is there a geo-fence (or connection to my home wifi network) to ensure the garage door is NOT opened erroneously when you are far from home?
 

kput

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Funny I was just going thru the Ford Developer libraries to see if that was possible. My one concern, is there a geo-fence (or connection to my home wifi network) to ensure the garage door is NOT opened erroneously when you are far from home?
Not that I have set up. I'm not overly concerned however, if my phone isn't in the car AA won't connect and the option isn't available. Could still do it via voice or switch on my phone, but phone is password protected obviously 🤷‍♂️

I suppose if someone had my phone my keys and my car I might be in trouble, but let's hope I'm never in that situation 😅
 

2100

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Currently use the lift master remote because I never bothered programming my charger to open the garage when I moved to my current house.

Since the Bronco won't fit in my garage when she arrives I'm not going to bother with it now.
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