Pi Garage Alert

Raspberry Pi Python script to email, tweet, or send an SMS if a garage door is left open.

Quick Start

Here is a heavily condensed quick start guide. New users are strongly encouraged to read the full documentation at http://www.richlynch.com/code/pi_garage_alert.

1. Equipment required

   1. Raspberry Pi model A or B
   2. 2GB or larger SD card for the RPi filesystem
   3. Magnetic sensor (e.g. http://www.smarthome.com/7455/Seco-Larm-SM-226L-Garage-Door-Contacts-for-Closed-Circuits/p.aspx)
   4. USB wifi adapter (if not using Ethernet)
   5. USB power supply for RPi

2. Connect one wire of the magnetic sensor to a GPIO pin on the RPi and the other to a ground pin on the RPi. It is a good idea to put a 1kohm resistor in series with the sensor to protect the RPi from damage if anything is misconfigured.

3. Raspberry Pi initial setup

   1. Follow the guide at http://elinux.org/RPi_Easy_SD_Card_Setup to write the Raspbian image to the SD card.
   2. Boot the RPi and at raspi-config, expand the filesystem, set the "pi" account password, set the hostname, and enable SSH.
   3. Reboot the Raspberry Pi

4. Edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and configure the RPi to connect to your wifi network.

5. Regenerate the ssh keys for security.

6. Update the packages with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade, then install the dependencies:

    sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev libffi-dev
    sudo easy_install pip
    sudo pip install sleekxmpp
    sudo pip install tweepy
    sudo pip install twilio
    sudo pip install requests
    sudo pip install requests[security]
   

7. Optional email configuration

   1. Configure postfix to send mail using Google SMTP, or your ISP's SMTP server

8. Optional twitter configuration 2. On https://dev.twitter.com/apps/new, create a new application

9. Optional twillio (SMS) configuration 3. Sign up for a Twilio account at http://www.twilio.com.

10. Copy bin/pi_garage_alert.py to /usr/local/sbin

11. Copy etc/pi_garage_alert_config.py to /usr/local/etc. Edit this file and specify the garage doors you have and alerts you'd like.

12. Copy init.d/pi_garage_alert to /etc/init.d

13. Configure and start the service with

    sudo update-rc.d pi_garage_alert defaults
    sudo service pi_garage_alert start
    

14. At this point, the Pi Garage Alert software should be running. You can view its log in /var/log/pi_garage_alert.log

Other Uses

The script will work with any sensor that can act like a switch. Some alternate uses include:

• Basement or washing machine leak sensors
• Window sensors