electric gates can be an exceptional labor-saving device, allowing one to remain in a automobile while the gate opens and closes by remote activation. However, it can become somewhat of a hassle juggling the various remotes and keyfobs required, so [bredman] devised an alternative option – controlling an electric gate over the mobile network.
20 years ago, this might have been achieved by wiring a series of relays up to the ringer of a carphone. These days, it’s a little a lot more sophisticated – a GSM/GPRS module is connected to an Arduino Nano. When an incoming call is detected, the gate is opened. After a 3 minute wait, the gate is once again closed.
[bredman] suffered some setbacks during the project, due to the vagaries of working with serial on the Arduino Nano and the reset line on the A6 GSM module. However, overall, the gate was a basic device to interface with, as like lots of such appliances, it has well-labelled and documented pins for sending the gate open and close signals.
[bredman] was careful to design the system to avoid unwanted operation. The system is created to always automatically close the gate, so no matter how lots of times the controller is called, the gate will always end up in a closed state. special attention was also paid to making sure the controller could gracefully manage losing connection to the mobile network. It’s choices like these that can make a project much a lot more satisfying to use – a gate system that regularly requires attention and rebooting will likely not last long with its users.
Overall, it’s a great project that shows how easily accessible such projects are – with some very carefully chosen modules and mastery of serial communications, it’s a cinch to put together a project to connect nearly anything to the Internet or mobile networks these days. For a different take, check out this garage door opener that logs to Google Drive.
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