Got an e-mail from my garage door

It said it was open for 5 minutes as a warning to let me know that I might have forgotten to close it.  Actually I had purposefully left it open to test a device I built based on a couple blog entries from Richard L. Lynch.  Now I don’t know Richard, but I found his postings when searching for a solution to absent mindedly leaving the garage door open.  Since we have smart phones on us at all times, a simple e-mail from the garage door would be great if it was open for too long.  Richard came up with an elegant solution using a Raspberry Pi and a small Python program hooked up to a garage door sensor.  The posts could use some updates for the current Raspberry Pi model B+ but they work.  Here are the 2 posts by Richard.

http://www.richlynch.com/2013/07/27/pi_garage_alert_1/

http://www.richlynch.com/2013/08/04/pi_garage_alert_2/

You won’t need to USB hub with the B+ model since it has plenty of USB ports.  I used CAT 5 cable to connect the sensor to the Pi in the basement.  I chose the basement to mount the Pi since it will be out of the elements and kept cool for the most part.

I’m planning on getting another Pi so I can load Mono on it and write the code in C# which is what I’m used to.