Nothing EVER Works!

[jakkuh_t]

 

[AMD A10-9600P]

Oh Linus, nothing ever does

[WhitetailAni]

Wait, you've had things work correctly the first time?

 

[rcmaehl]

+1 for Home Assistant. Can even run it on HyperV if you don't have a dedicated machine for it. Although it runs on a rPi just fine

[Streetguru]

Why doesn't Linus just start his own Garage Door opener company? How is he ever going to compete with Elon if he's only running youtube(s)?

Make it raspberry pi/other based too for ease of installation.

[Mike Storms]

One solution that maybe would've solved this issue midway is to use electromagnetic shielding for the wires to the relay board.

As an electrical engineering student we learned a lot about EMI (electromagnetic interference) and a quick and easy solution is to:
- make your wires as short as possible,

- twist your wires to create a twisted pair, which solve the majority of lower frequency interference.

If this doesnt work, use a shielded cable and it should be good.

(for a more thorough explanation, I can send some interesting reading material)

[gioyufu]

Why doesn't he just use smart RF remote that can be connected to wifi? 

 

Like this one. He could just program his 433Mhz keyfob into it and that's it

 

 

[Inelastic]

Wouldn't it have been easier to use a SwitchBot to push the garage door button?

[The Jack of Clubs]

Linus did it wrong. I was going to use ewelink (sonoff) or tuya or something like that to control my garage door because I also didnt want to pay for myq. Then myq ditched the fee and the myq hub was $16 on amazon. BUT to use voice, you have to use IFTTT with it which is now unusable with its fees, and it doesnt let you open the door by voice, as hes covered. However you can use voice to open and close your garage door easily with kloee simple commands. Sign into myq in simplecommands, create two routines for closing and opening each garage door, they will show up as scenes when you pair it to google home or alexa. Then write a routine in alexa or google home where when i say "open garage door" it runs scene "open garage". No need for a raspberry pi and home assistant. Ive been using it for a year now with no problems.

 

[Mike Storms]

6 minutes ago, SGT-AMD said:

Sometimes, grounding only on one end will make a big difference as well.

How many twists per inch?

 

As many as you can. In a nutshell each 'loop' creates an EM field, due to the switched polarity of the loops, each set will cancel eachother out. 

If you increase the number of loops, you decrease the size of each loop, so the induced field is smaller. It's the kind of thing where an increased granularity benefits the total result. e.g. +3 -3 is worse than +1 -1 +1 -1 +1 -1

[Mike Storms]

2 minutes ago, SGT-AMD said:

I understand how it works. I have never seen power cables from a power supply twisted: Chokes, yes, but not twisted.

 

It's because this is not a power line but a signal line. In power lines you have a constant supply voltage. What most people don't know is that this is never truly constant. In most circuitry there is a lot of jitter and skew on the power line. This doesn't matter because the circuitry just needs the higher voltage and is filtered multiple times untill it is really send out. Therefore people dont twist power lines. But in this case, the signal on the line would be a propagating pulse or a step function. The sensing of this level is very prone to inefficiencies, so twisting is recommended.

[DarthMooMoo]

Wouldn't OpenGarage (opengarage.io) be a far cheaper and simpler (and more responsive) option? It integrates with Home-Assistant and uses a relay-based system like he used to have. Plus, it can detect garage door state using a distance sensor and it works with Home-Assistant. No cloud API required. 

[MultiGamerClub]

autopilottonowhere.com is a really good website.

[dizmo]

TL;DW

 

Don't be cheap and pay the $1/month.

[rcmaehl]

9 minutes ago, dizmo said:

TL;DW

 

Don't be cheap and pay the $1/month.

The video explicitly states the $1/month doesn't exist anymore but you can only CLOSE the doors, not Open. Also their authentication SUCKS (I mean it has the same issue as floatplane *coughLUKEPLSGETONTHIScough*)

[dizmo]

Just now, rcmaehl said:

The video explicitly states the $1/month doesn't exist anymore but you can only CLOSE the doors, not Open. Also their authentication SUCKS (I mean it has the same issue as floatplane *coughLUKEPLSGETONTHIScough*)

He made it seem like that issue was only with the iftt implementation. Not the entire app.

[FireEagle244]

I have been wanting to start using HomeAssistant to control my ever expanding number of smart home devices. This video is honestly hilarious because it shows exactly what issues you might see when using technology. 

[Sarah_Six]

Ok so Electro boom is right about the long wires being an issues.  But hes wrong about the solution.  You don't want a filter, you just need a either a transistor or a mosfet depending on the signal the board is using.  I'm going to assum you have an extra board for the controller as you had it out while the system was on the wall?  So DM me for the address and send it to me.  I'll rig up a micro circuit that the relay can trigger and send it back free of charge.  Its SUCH and each fix! I can even build it with a jack in the housing if you have a spare housing you can send.  That way the relay just plugs into it.

 

To be clear I would been the control board for the garage door with the button, you know where you added the wires.  I wouldn't need the relay board.  

 

Oh as evidence of my bonofides I give you my gaming/engineering deck at home......  See attached

[abc_123]

At one point he said that he couldn't change the settings on the Chinese wifi relay because it wouldn't connect to the new access point and there was no way to change or reset things without connecting to it.

 

Couldn't he have just temporarily used the old access point to connect and update the network settings or set it up to just repeat the signal from the new AP? Seems like it would have saved a lot of money and time on things that were later abandoned.

[Michael W H]

Hey Linus,

 

First time poster here but wanted to point out that you misrepresented what the Nabu Casa cloud subscription really is. This is not a hosted version of home assistant but a sophisticated proxy for remotely accessing your home assistant without the security concerns of the DIY port forwarding option. It also allows for Google Home and Alexa integrations as well.

[Sarah_Six]

Now that I think about it I could reprogram that old banger for you as well.  Probably.  I'd lay high odds it had an open uart port.  Or some pin shorting to reset or the like.  

[poochyena]

I really don't understand the point of this whole thing. Great, you can open your garage door at any location... why?

[BondiBlue]

7 minutes ago, poochyena said:

I really don't understand the point of this whole thing. Great, you can open your garage door at any location... why?

I have a myQ compatible opener, and I like being able to see if the door is open or closed wherever I am. Sometimes family members stop by when I'm at work, and I am able to check that the door is closed when they leave (I have cats, so it's important). That's been handy several times, and I've only had the opener for a few months. 

[bubsterboo]

Hey Linus,

 

I went through a pretty similar adventure. With a Chamberlain garage door opener in the lower mainland.
I ultimately opted for a Relay style approach in a similar way:

https://imgur.com/a/GGhkcT2

But I put a Solid State Relay on the board quite close to the button. I also used physical reed switches on the door to know when the door is fully opened or closed. The button and 2 reed swtiches were wired up to an ESP32 PoE. I chose to wire it to ethernet instead of using Wifi. Its programmed with EspHome:
https://esphome.io/components/cover/index.html

This works natively in Home Assistant, knows when it's open or closed. And unlike the MyQ service it doesn't require an internet connection.

 

You'll find on the homeassistant subreddit that the MyQ integration is quite popular (likely because people arn't left with much of a choice). But it often goes down because its a cloud service and MyQ will often change their API without notice breaking the homeassistant integration. So you'll eventually findout that MyQ doesn't always work either!

 

I have been using this esphome solution for about a year and half now and its been rock solid.

[Reactor89]

I would 2nd bubsterboo's build as a solution. Putting an optocoupler between the relay and garage circuitry will solve your stability issue:

 

https://i.ibb.co/jLZQMS2/Opto-isolator-garage.png

 

A Lite-On LTV-817 Optocoupler will work well.

 

47 minutes ago, bubsterboo said:

Hey Linus,

 

I went through a pretty similar adventure. With a Chamberlain garage door opener in the lower mainland.
I ultimately opted for a Relay style approach in a similar way:

https://imgur.com/a/GGhkcT2

But I put a Solid State Relay on the board quite close to the button. I also used physical reed switches on the door to know when the door is fully opened or closed. The button and 2 reed swtiches were wired up to an ESP32 PoE. I chose to wire it to ethernet instead of using Wifi. Its programmed with EspHome:
https://esphome.io/components/cover/index.html

This works natively in Home Assistant, knows when it's open or closed. And unlike the MyQ service it doesn't require an internet connection.

 

You'll find on the homeassistant subreddit that the MyQ integration is quite popular (likely because people arn't left with much of a choice). But it often goes down because its a cloud service and MyQ will often change their API without notice breaking the homeassistant integration. So you'll eventually findout that MyQ doesn't always work either!

 

I have been this esphome solution for about a year and half now and its been rock solid.