Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

RE: Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

KalebTheMaker — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 20:09:55 GMT

Update Time!

Hi All, It's been a minute and a blown meniscus later, but I'm still going!

I have acquired two older actuators from my Uncle. They seem to be Apollo 816LA Gate Openers (Link to Install Manual), operate on 12vdc, and have magnetic limit switches built into the actuator. I have opened it up and tested it. The motor works, but I have not tested the limit switches yet. I have two of these and can harvest parts out of the other if needed.

The motor had a sticker on it from HTI Tech. & Ind with the identifier: HTBRR06311412B-0001 and a P/N: 203104. I have not been able to find specs on this to see what its max Amp rating is, but when I tested it (no load) it was 0.7A. The only real way to check the load is to get it installed on the gate and run it, but I am not quite there yet. However, I did grab onto the thing and tried as hard as I could to stop it. The motor bogged down pretty hard, and I would guess that I put more load on it than the gate would be swinging. That came out to 1.99A.

Normally (for me) when I spec a motor controller, I give it a LOT of headroom if I can. I would think something like a 10A driver for this would be fine. The gate is really light.

Questions for you about selecting a motor driver:

Does anyone see a problem giving it that much headroom (10A Driver)?
Does anyone have a recommendation for a motor driver?
1. I would prefer a motor driver board rather than an IC. I've got plenty to do on this project already.
2. The controller will most likely be an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 (3.3v Logic)
3. I would like to have current sensing on it for squish detection, but not absolutely required...

I have a couple in mind that I have used in the past, but they are dual-channel and overkill.

What I have learned (and please call me out of my math is wrong here!):

Power:

It seems that if I use 100w of panels to charge batteries, I won't have much of a problem using a 12V 12Ah (144Wh) LiFePO4 battery. 100W can charge that battery in about 2.4 Hours. (Calculated here: https://footprinthero.com/solar-panel-charge-time-calculator).

Running the actuator at full load (1.99A, let's call it 2A) @ 12vdc, it's pulling ~24w. With the battery described above, I should be able to run continuously for ~6 hours on a full charge. (Calculated here: https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/battery-capacity).

That sounds to me like I won't have a power issue at all... I can't imagine more than 6 or 8 opens/closes per day.

Limits:

Since the actuator has limits built in, I will not have to install any external limit switches.

What I have decided about this project:

I am going to use an Arduino, probably the Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 for the controller and have the configuration interface running on a web server in the house. The Arduino will pull a config periodically and or have the server push the config to the Arduino when the config is updated. The config will be stored on an SD card on the Arduino in case the server is unavailable for whatever reason.

Any thoughts are appreciated!

-Kaleb

RE: Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

robogary — Fri, 28 Oct 2022 23:41:28 GMT

Squish detection can be done by watching the motor overload, but cant be faster than load spikes for acceleration and other gate stiction events.

Cameras can be added to auto open the gate on your license plate detection, and also save license plate photos of those the machine language program doesnt recognize.

RE: Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

DAB — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 19:02:54 GMT

Have you considered using parts from a standard garage door opener?

The parts are all off the shelf and it would only take a little modification to set it up as a fence opener/closer.

RE: Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

BigG — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 10:06:56 GMT

Back in 2018 there was an element14 competition called "Build a Smarter World", which asked members to come up with ideas using LoRa.

I came up with an idea for communal access control, for something like remote gates etc. using LoRa. Maybe this is of use

/products/arduino/arduino-projects/b/blog/posts/communal-based-access-control-using-an-arduino-mkr-1300-wan

The solution used Slack messaging, but these days other MQTT based or other messaging platform options could also be used, to notify the gate owner that someone wants to get access through the locked gate:

/products/arduino/arduino-projects/b/blog/posts/communal-based-access-control-using-arduino-mkr-wan-1300

Here's some of the videos from the above blog (in case you cannot access them):

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxzXQDlyqeo:640:360]

[View:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wbWBkTpt0:640:360]

Hope it helps.

RE: Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

beacon_dave — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 16:46:30 GMT

"...so you don't squish anyone in the system..."

If you hinge the gate on the downhill side, you may avoid squishing people.

RE: Project - Gate Opener/Closer Control System

beacon_dave — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 16:20:07 GMT

To save power you could use something like an ATtiny that powers up something like a R-Pi but only when needed.

Ben Heck did something like that in his GeoCache episode to provide LCD GUI plus camera functionality.

/challenges-projects/element14-presents/benheck/ben-heck-exclusive/w/documents/872/episode-197-ben-heck-s-beaglebone-black-geocache-episode

If you want to reprogram remotely, then perhaps have it wake up from a RTC module interval timer and call home to check and grab any updates that need applying before going back to sleep.

The likes of the MKR WAN1310 has various power saving features that can turn the radio module off and go to sleep when not doing anything to conserve power.