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Remote Gate Controller

Former Member

I live very rural and my driveway is half a mile long.  Installed an automatic gate controller last year and it works great with remote controls in our vehicles and a keypad for regular visitors/family.  It is powered by a 30 watt solar panel, 8 amp solar charge controller  and 100 amp/hour battery.   My issue is that the most powerful remote gate opener I have found will only go about 800 feet (far short of 1/2 mile). 

 

My temporary solution to this situation is to use two old EFJohnson SCADA radios, one at the house and one at the gate. I use a doorbell button to key the radio at the house which turns on the Carrier Detect signal on the radio at the front gate.  The radio at the front gate is also powered by the alternative energy solution that powers the gate and receives only(doesn't consume much power).  The carrier detect signal drives a relay that provides a contact closure that tells the gate controller to open the gate.  One problem with this arrangement is that the gate could easily be opened by someone with a radio keying at the receive frequency of the radio at the gate.

 

I have recently obtained two 2.4GHz  Ethernet radios that I plan to use so that I can have a camera at the front gate that will give me motion sensing abilities and send alerts via text and email when someone comes to our front gate.  Using this Ethernet connectivity, I'd like to use two Arduino boards, one at the house with a momentary switch and one at the gate to drive the aforementioned relay.

 

This will be my first Arduino project and I welcome any and all suggestions and recommendations from those with more Arduino experience than me.  I also have plans to make a controller for the Chicken Coop that closes the chicken entrance at dusk and opens it again at dawn, liberating me from the chore of closing chickens in the evening.

  • 0

    Sounds like a fun project!

    I have worked with Arduino but not in a remote control application like yours.

    However I have done something like your application using a Raspberry Pi and free software called webiopi. https://code.google.com/p/webiopi/

     

    Using your wifi connection between home and the gate, the Raspberry would be located at the gate where it would control a relay.  (In my application, I can control 6 relays and am monitoring 2 contact closures).

    At home, you could use a PC to click a button on the screen or using an Android phone or tablet, also click an onscreen button.

     

    A couple of the members on the webiopi group https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/webiopi have created remote garage door control.  One even has a video camera on the same screen as the open / closed buttons.

     

    With webiopi, you could open and close the gate. See a video stream from the gate and also monitor contact status closures from the gate to confirm operation if desired.

     

    Might be fun to have a MP3 player at the gate with pre-recorded messages played with momentary relay closure control by webiopi.  One could tell your visitor the gate will be opening.  Another could tell the visitor your not buying what ever they're selling.

     

    Webiopi is much easier to implement than it may appear from the web page.  If I can do it, you can too!  I would be happy to offer my experiences via email or phone.

     

    Randy

  • 0

    No expert here but, check out the new Spark Core Wifi Arduino replacement. $39 for both Wifi & Micro-Controller and its only 1.5" by 1".  The coding is not 100% same as Arudino as it uses a much more powerful Cortex processor in the mix. New shipments are being done this month. I am buying the Shield-Shield to attach my other arduino boards. With Shipping its about $65. (Disclaimer: I am not connect to Spark Devices who develops Spark Core).  Also, Spark Core has an implemented "Cloud Interface" no other hobby product has accomplished this.

     

    Randy above is absolutely correct, whatever M/C you use for your gate opener project make sure that you go though an encrypted connection via your Wireless Router so no one can hack you gate by scanning the RF remote frequency.

     

    Implementing Arduino code to be used via a browser is very simple once you know the trick of "wrapping" the Arduino IDE "Webserver" in to an HTML Page iFrame.  Here is my example of this at youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lol-2-wqJZ8

     

    Let us know what you decide to do and progress as well.

     

    Bobby

  • 0

    Can you use GSM where you are? The GSM network is very stable and it is easy to build a remote gate opener using a GSM module. We have a system here in South Africa where you can load up to 300 people on a GSM switch and only those people can open the gate. The system has two inputs and two outputs. I want to build an Arduino based system that does the same.