Looking for advice/instruction for building garage door clos

[mjohnson]

I thought up an idea to hookup a timer to my garage door to ensure
that it is closed by 10pm each night. Since I have zero electronics
experience I figured this might be a good project to learn some basic
skill with for fun. I picked up a couple of Forest M. Mims books but
realized quickly I'm over my head as to now to decide what circuits I
would need; but, I didn't want to give up too easily and I'm hoping
folks here would enjoy helping me out.

The first phase of project as I envisioned it would include:
1) a timer
2) the garage door transmitter
3) photo sensor to determine if the door was up or down

The McGyver in me wanted to buy an inexpensive battery operated travel
alarm clock for the timer piece thinking that I wouldn't have to
construct a timer and interface. My thought was to tap the buzzer
leads to determine when the timer went off to actuate the "closer"
circuit. Otherwise, there is an example of building a 24 hour timer in
the Mims book that I could use.

Before getting to far into things my initial questions are:
1) could I use the travel alarm clock as described?
2) how do I interface the timer (either bought or homebuilt) to the
switch on the garage door transmitter?

For question #2 I assume that I can carefully unsolder the push button
on the remote transmitter and wire it to some sort of transistor type
switch or relay. Could someone describe some possibilities and hold I
might actually get it connected?

As far as the door open/close sensor goes I'm assuming it's straight
forward and that it would interface to the circuit with via an AND
gate. I'll look into that later.

Anyway, thanks for your time and your responses....

Mark.

 

[Dave]

I use a magnet on the door and a reed switch mounted on the frame wired
to an indicator in the house to let me know when I left the door
opened.
cheap and simple.
Dave
JeB wrote:

On 11 Apr 2005 11:02:05 -0700, "mjohnson" <crvmp3@hotmail.com> wrote:

I thought up an idea to hookup a timer to my garage door to ensure
that it is closed by 10pm each night. Since I have zero electronics

I'd imagine you might get by with a lamp timer in parellel with the
wired button in the garage.

 

[mjohnson]

So to measure the "voltages and signals" at the output of the buzzer
would I just set the alarm off and use a multimeter to determine
what/if there is any voltage?

Would I do the same with the transmitter -- put a multimeter between
the switch and then push the button and see what registers. What kind
of numbers should I expect to see? Something above 1 volt but smaller
than 5 volts?

Is voltage and signal the same thing or do I need to measure the signal
differently.

thanks!