[Ray]

Each Blynk project has its own unique authorization token. You can duplicate the same project for each garage door you have, and each of them will be assigned a different authorization token. On your first OG device, put the first token, and on your second device, put the second token. This way each device communicates with its specific Blynk project.

You can give each Blynk project a different name to help you distinguish them apart. To switch between different projects in Blynk, click the ‘exit-door’ like icon on the top-left corner, then you can swipe left and right to switch between different projects.

[Ray]

I am not sure how to access the transformer — most garage door systems have a 110V powerline plug, and I don’t know where to access the internal transformer, or its wires.

That said, it’s interesting to know that the internal transformer is 24VAC — this is the same as sprinkler controllers. Our other product, OpenSprinkler, has internal 24VAC to 5VDC converter, so it would be straightforward to copy the same circuitry to OpenGarage.

[Ray]

I am not familiar with apple carplay or what the approval process is like. Any directions for information?

[Ray]

The date time is directly obtained from NTP server. It gets UTC time, and the actual time displayed on the web interface depends on your web browser — the web browser uses the UTC time from OpenGarage combined with the local time zone to display local time. The only thing I can think of is if one of your OG is not getting response from NTP server. But I don’t know how that’s possible — it’s connected to your WiFi router, it looks like you are able to access it (albeit it’s slow), so I can’t think of any obvious reason why it won’t receive response from NTP server. Perhaps your router is blocking the packets for some reason?

[Ray]

I’ve responded to your through support ticket. Here is what I said:

There are a few things to check:
1. Does your garage door system have an antenna or a ‘Program’ or ‘Learn’ button? If so, what’s the color of the antenna or button? Systems that have a yellow antenna or learn button needs to use a Security+ 2.0 adapter, because of the crypto chip that’s built-in to these systems.

2. Do a simple test to short test on the BWC terminal: specifically, keep the wires in the BWC terminals, and at the other end of the two wires, short them for a second or two. This should trigger the garage door to open or close (except Security+ 2.0 systems, as explained above). If this works, then the problem is likely to be the orange terminal block on OpenGarage, which may have a connection issue. If the short test doesn’t work, that means your garage door system has built-in crypto, and an adapter will be needed for OpenGarage to interface with it.

[Ray]

I am working on the OG firmware this weekend and I do plan to include static IP in the firmware. So you can expect to see it fairly soon.

But let me comment on this line that you said: “wouldn’t it be better to put the static IP feature in and let the customer decide” — no, it’s not always a better idea. With OpenSprinkler we’ve had plenty of users who didn’t know how to properly configure the static IP, some of them did not set the gateway IP correctly, some of them set an IP that’s in a different subnet, causing the device to be not able to receive packets. If you give this option to users, they will be curious and will want to try it, sometimes without knowing how to use it correctly. Giving more flexibility is not always a better idea, this is what I learned from running the business.

[Ray]

How often do you have to replace a router? I personally think it’s a really bad approach to set static IP on the devices — the IP may not be compatible with your router’s IP range (especially if you change your router, the IP range may not match at all), or you may accidentally configure two devices to have the same IP causing an IP conflict. The reason routers have this DHCP reservation feature is exactly to address such issues. You are essentially trying to manually recreate what routers can do automatically.

[Ray]

Yes it has several pins available, notably digital 4, 5, and analog A0. Digital 4 and 5 are also the default i2C pins (i.e. SDA, SCL). You can use them to add a second distance sensor, or any I2C device.

[Ray]

Sorry about my late response. I am not sure why it reads 562, that’s a quite large number. If the problem is not resolved, please submit a support ticket. Thanks.

[Ray]

Very cool. That’s an innovative use of OG 🙂

[Ray]

Sorry that the issue still exists. I am pretty sure the latest firmware code handles re-connect, but I suspect the compiled firmware that we flash to OG doesn’t have this portion of the code. I will check asap and fix the compiled firmware.

[Ray]

You can set up port forward and access OG remotely. That way you can change the token. I don’t really know why the project disappeared from your Blynk account. Could it be possible that you logged into a different account?

Yes you can reboot the device remotely, that is, if you can set up port forward to access it remotely. The reboot button is on the homepage I believe.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 7 months ago by Ray.

[Ray]

The event name is opengarage:
https://github.com/OpenGarage/OpenGarage-Firmware/blob/master/OpenGarage/main.cpp#L541

[Ray]

Thank you for fixing it on your own. Sometimes the OTA update may get stuck due to data transfer failure but generally if it gets stuck you can unplug power and reboot the device, and just try again.

[Ray]

I am not sure what you mean by “read from” OG — the IFTTT feature pushes messages from the OG to the IFTTT server, it doesn’t read from OG directly.

[Ray]

I am not really sure about this. Does Blynk work when you don’t have VPN setup?

[Ray]

This is definitely doable if you modify the firmware code.

[Ray]

One thing you can try is to install Blynk on a different mobile phone, or pad, and log in to your account. See if you receive notifications on a different phone. If not, it’s possible that the notification widget is for some reason removed. You can add it again — this is a widget available in Blynk. To add it, click the stop button in Blynk project to stop the OpenGarage project from running, click add to add the notification widget, then click on the play icon to re-run the project.

[Ray]

Cool. Thanks a lot for sharing!

[Ray]

Connection from phone to cloud can be easily made secure — Blynk supports secure connection, it’s just a matter of changing a few lines of code in the firmware code.

[Ray]

If you don’t want notification, you can go to the Blynk project, stop the project, click on the Notification widget and delete it. Then click on the Play icon again to run the project again.

[Ray]

You said you are ‘using IOs’ — what is IOs?

The OpenGarage user manual:
https://github.com/OpenGarage/OpenGarage-Firmware/raw/master/docs/OGManual.pdf
has some basic descriptions about how to get IFTTT notification to work. You need to:
– create an account on IFTTT
– enable the maker channel, and copy / paste the Maker key to OpenGarage
– create a recipe in IFTTT, with Maker channel as the trigger, and whatever notification method as action (SMS, email etc).
– In the recipe, make sure you keep ‘value1’ in the message because OpenGarage uses that parameter to pass the notification message.

[Ray]

Without the Blynk app, you can set up port forwarding on your router so that you can access OpenGarage remotely by using your router’s external IP address.

I am surprised to hear that Blynk produces random triggers. I’ve never had such a problem before.

[Ray]

What firmware version is it running?

[Ray]

OK, it may be that the released bin does not contain this last minute change. I will check and update this weekend.

[Author]

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