Mike M

Finally about to start a project I've been wanting to do for a long time - monitoring and closing my garage door. I know that a variety of approaches have been discussed on this and other forums. Initially I was going to use a spare remote to activate the door as demonstrated in this great thread Monitor & Control your Garage Door with Android App

However, rather than use a remote - I decided I want to wire my device directly to the door opener open/close terminals. My question is can I still use these optoisolators http://www.sparkfun.com/products/314 that I've already purchased on sparkfun to act as my "switch"?

The contacts are labeled as 24V. I actually tried measuring the voltage when by touching my meter probes to the two contacts. I expected the door to open when I did this - but it did not - it just measured 16V. (Probably obvious to many of you why the door did not open - but this electronics noob is stumped!). I also measured amperage the same way. This time the door did open when I touched the probes and measured 27mA.

Appreciate any and all thoughts on the approach.

Thanks a lot -
Mike

I'd like to receive notifications from the netduino, either via e-mail or SMS. I'm open to using a netduino plus, or either regular or mini with an ethernet shield.

The problem that I see is that most mail servers (all the ones I deal with) require authentication. Even if they allowed non SSL authentication (which again, many don't) - I wouldn't be willing to send username / password in the clear. I understand from this post SslStream.AuthenticateAsClient Issue (Microsoft.SPOT.Net.Security class) that SSL isn't an option - at least not with netduino plus.

I've considered having the netduino talk to another machine on my local network, and having it relay the message - and that's my fallback solution. However I'd really prefer this to be an all in one box solution without requiring a PC to make it work.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I really hoping that I'm just missing the obvious...