There's nothing new to having a remote-controlled garage door, however there's so much more room for expansion and integrating technology to make life better. Eric Tsai has demonstrated an Internet-enabled automation system that not only allows for control and monitoring of the garage, there's also a traffic light-style indicator showing how far the vehicle has entered the garage.
By using a combination of Ethernet-enabled Arduino hardware, MQTT and some clever coding you the user can check from afar if the garage is occupied, control the door and monitor the space from afar - as shown in the following video:
For complete details, check out Eric's project page. And for more, we're on facebook, Google+, and twitter - so follow us for news and product updates as well.
When putting together your next Internet-enabled Arduino - save time, space and money with the Freetronics EtherTen. Apart from being fully Arduino Uno-compatible , it has onboard Ethernet, microSD socket, full USB interface (so you don't need a costly FTDI cable just to upload a sketch!) and supports optional Power-over-Ethernet.
