39 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
39 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
Title: Garage Door Opener Hack
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Date: 2021-12-26
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Category: Creations
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Summary: Hacking my garage door opener to work over Wifi.
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Short: 5
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In the quest to automate as much of my house as possible, I thought it would be
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useful to be able to remotely control my garage door from my home automation
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system. If I suspected that I forgot to close it while leaving, I could check in
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my security cameras and then close it from anywhere. It's nice having this peace
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of mind, even if it almost never happens.
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Instead of reverse engineering the wireless protocol, cracking the encryption,
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and sending my own commands, I figured it would be much easier to hack the
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hardware. I cracked open a spare remote to find that it contained a basic PCB
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with simple tactile switches.
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![the six parts of the spare remote on my desk: metal clip, plastic buttons, battery, PCB, and two halves of the case]({static}/images/garage/garage1.jpg)
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My plan was to solder an Arduino controlled relay in parallel with the button
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that toggled the garage door. I would also power the remote from the 3 V pin. I
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soldered four wires on to the appropriate pins.
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![a closeup of the green PCB with two wires soldered to the battery terminals and two to the button pins]({static}/images/garage/garage2.jpg)
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I drilled a hole in the plastic case and routed the wires through it while
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reassembling the remote. It's connected to an Adafruit ESP8266 Arduino with a
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relay module shield.
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The Arduino joins my isolated home automation Wifi network and connects over
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MQTT, a simple messaging protocol, to my automation server. When it receives a
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command over MQTT it toggles the relay on for a quarter of a second and then
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off, simulating a button press.
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![the completed system: an arduino with a white relay and wires leading to the reassembled garage door remote]({static}/images/garage/garage3.jpg)
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Update: this system has been flawless for two months now. It's worked every time
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I've tried to toggle the door and has never opened by mistake.
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