[TriLUG] OT: need ideas for a project that just landed in my lap

[William Sutton]

First thought....is it possible to open the box with the buttons, and 
re-wire them?  seems like that's the simple, obvious solution here :)

another idea would be to hack the switch so that power drives the motor up 
and lack of power lets the gate back down...then rewire the button wires 
into a standard power cable (male end), weatherize it, run it into the 
guard shack, and hook that up to an x10 lamp module...set up a small box 
(say a soekris or something) with the x10 rf device, and then set up a web 
page on that that interfaces with the x10 rf via bottlerocket and a web 
page :)

-- 
William Sutton


On Wed, 15 Feb 2006, Greg Brown wrote:

> Here's the situation: the campground that hosts one of my wireless empires
> has a security gate (the kind with an arm that moves up and down).  The gate
> is controlled by a garage door remote control and two hard wired buttons.
> Both buttons are broken and the owner can't tear up the road to put down new
> wires for the hard wired buttons.
> 
> They want a web-based "button" they can press to raise the gate.  I have NO
> EARTHLY IDEA where to start with this.  The good news is I have wireless in
> place and a Linux server doing light duty.  The only thing I can think that
> would work would be to put a Linux box of some kid (hopefully lightweight,
> an OpenWRT(ish) kind of thing) out in the gate house attached to whatever
> the broken wire was attached to.  Then when someone presses the "I'm here
> dammit, raise the gate" button they could web over to that device and press
> a button on a web page that would set power to a serial connection that
> would complete the circuit on the gate controller that would then raise the
> gate.
> 
> I have an unused Asus access point that runs OpenWRT AND has two USB ports.
> I don't know anything about programming for USB.  Can I use this box and
> power up a wire that would open the gate?   What about a wireless attached
> soekris 4501?   It at least has a 9 pin serial connector.  Any thoughts?
> 
> Greg
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