How to build a Tesla garage opener with a Particle Monitor One

I love my Tesla, but every time I pull up to my garage, I’m jolted back to the stone age. There I am, in this futuristic car, fumbling for an ancient garage door opener. It felt ridiculous – like using a sundial to set my smartwatch. I knew there had to be a way to bring my garage door controls up to speed with my car’s tech and fix my daily annoyance.

The Solution

I came up with this project to solve my own headache. Using a Particle Monitor One and Google Firebase, I’ve created a simple website that I can access right from my Tesla’s touchscreen. Now, I just tap my car’s browser, and voila – my garage door opens or closes on command. No more digging for remotes or cluttering my phone with another app.

Bill of Materials

• Particle Monitor One Developer Edition
• Tesla car (any will do)
• Industrial magnetic switch
• Shelly BLU Button1

 

 

Architecture

The Particle Monitor One is connected to your garage door system. When you use the web interface on your Tesla’s touchscreen, it communicates with Google Firebase. Firebase then sends the command to the Particle Cloud, which relays it to the Monitor One, controlling the garage door.

 

 

Hardware

The project uses a Particle Monitor One Developer Edition and its I/O Card.

The I/O Card included with your Monitor One Developer Edition is packed with useful features to help you start creating right away:

• VIN – Power input, 6 to 30V DC
• CAN Bus
• RS485 (Modbus)
• 4-20 mA input
• 0-10V analog input
• 12-24V slow-signal input, Opto-isolated
• Relay, 30VDC 2A maximum
• QWIIC connector, 3.3V I2C

 

 

Prototype card

There are few prototype cards included that you can swap for the original I/O Card and solder on it whatever your project might need:

However, we will use the I/O card because it contains all the necessary components.

 

 

Perk #1: Particle Ledger

We leverage Particle Ledger to automatically sync the garage door status with the cloud.

What is Ledger?

Ledger is the digital representation of your product. It’s a cloud-based key/value store designed to create digital twins for your customers and users.

Particle Ledger enables you to build digital twins, monitor state changes, queue messages, and aggregate data across devices through a simple key/value store scoped to your devices, products, and organizations

• Store the last known state and configuration data of your device
• Easily get () and set() data to/from a Ledger from Device OS or the REST API
• Understand state and changes over time with timestamped data points with queryable history

Create the Particle Ledger

Go to the Particle console and create a Device to Cloud ledger, naming it “garage-monitor-edge”. The process is detailed in the Particle documentation.

 

 

Perk #2 – BLE buttons

The project uses Shelly BLE buttons to control the garage door.

Do not underestimate the impact of this little button. My son was thrilled when I gave him one and told him he could use it to open or close the garage door whenever he wanted. His “This is so cool, Dad!” still resonates in my mind. Only a Maker Dad will understand how rare an event that is.

You can find more information and usage instructions here.

 

 

Firmware

Based on the Monitor Edge firmware, code was added to control the garage door and get its status. The ‘particle’ folder in the code provided contains the firmware.

There are few areas of interest:

• The Particle cloud function toggleRelay() activates the relay for one second.
• The local function checkStatus() monitors the input signal indicating whether the door is closed. The ledger is updated when a change is detected.
• Continuous scanning detects BLE button presses.

 

 

Wiring

The Monitor One comes with two cables: one 8-pin and one 4-pin and an AC power source.

The 8-pin cable will be used for powering the system.

The 4-pin cable needs to be connected as follows:

RED: connect to one of the two terminals of the industrial magnetic switch. The other terminal connects to +24V on the power source.

GREEN and BLUE: these two wires connect to you garage door opener. There is a relay on the I/O Card that will short these two when you want to trigger the garage opener.

BLACK: not used.

 

 

Installation

Monitor One comes with two magnets that enable easy attachment to the garage opener support.

 

 

Firebase Google Cloud – Project setup

Go to Firebase console and add a project named “garage-monitor-edge”.

Install the Firebase CLI on your computer:

npm install -g firebase-tools

Check the Firebase CLI documentation for more information.

New to Firebase? Check out this intro video.

Note: Documenting each step precisely isn’t straightforward due to the specific knowledge required for Firebase. If you’re new to Firebase, be prepared to invest time in reading and watching instructional videos.

 

 

Firebase Google Cloud – Cloud Functions

The ‘fx’ folder in the code provided with this project contains everything we need.

Step 1: create an api user with permissions to call functions on Particle

Step 2: create an .env file under the ‘fx/functions’ folder with the following:

API_KEY_CALLFX="1235083045abcdef" <- this is what you get in step 1 
PARTICLE_PRODUCTID="123456"       <- Monitor One, Particle product  
PARTICLE_DEVICEID="1234567abcdef" <- Monitor One, device id

Do not include the comments I added here.

Step 3: deploy:

firebase deploy --only functions

The cloud function is called callParticleFunction(). It receives a request from an authorized user of the web app and calls the Particle API. The Particle API, in turn, calls a function on the Monitor One to trigger the onboard relay, which then opens or closes the garage door.

Here’s a great video to help you understand how Cloud Functions work.

 

 

Firebase Google Cloud – Web app

The web app will be hosted on Firebase Hosting.

On the ‘fx/ionic’ folder, run:

npm i

If you want to run the web app in your development environment, run:

ionic serve

The web app is using Angular v17 and the Ionic Framework v8.

Enable Firebase Hosting

Navigate to the Firebase console of your project then enable Hosting:

To deploy to Firebase Hosting, there is a deploy.sh script:

cd fx/ionic
./deploy.sh

Note: Firebase will assign a domain to your web app:

 

 

Firebase Google Cloud – Authentication

Now, you’ll need to manually create a user on Firebase Auth. While a typical web app would provide a signup page for this purpose, our web app omits this to simplify complexity.

Create your user by providing email and password:

 

 

Perk #3: Mobile and web app

Since the web app we just deployed can run on any browser, we can now use it on our laptop or phone.

Tip: Swipe down to refresh the system state.

 

 

Final Result

After finalizing this project, the key outcome is as follows:

Mission complete!