Greg Zimmers

This is very cool! I am very interested in Nixie. Could you post more details? The schematic does not appear to match the complete project. Thanks.

Great job! I have implemented this and added email notifications. My next goal is to add some sort of authentication to prevent unauthorized access to my garage. I know the public IP and custom port are a deterrent, but I would feel better with some sort of password entry. I will let you know if/when I come up with something.

I actually built a two server solution for my house. I have the Netduino only visible inside the network without any authentication. Then on my IIS server (exposed externally) I built a RESTful webservice with authentication. My Android app talks to the webservice which talks to the Netduino.

My main purpose for the app was to provide peace of mind that the door was closed while away and to be able to close it remotely. It also comes in handy to be able to open the door for someone who needs entry while your away.

anyone reading this post might be able to help me. I am using Greg's code and would like to modify to spit out the analog data every 50 or 100msec to ethernet. How to do that?.. Any help is greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.
Lou

This is more challenging. HTTP is inherently stateless. So "Pushing" information down to the client is not as straightforward as you might think. Your best bet would be to ping the server back at set interval. You can use Jquery or many other technologies to make these calls without refreshing the page.

First of all, thank you for documenting your work -- I've never done anything like this before and it's been extremely easy to follow and duplicate thus far... with one exception.

I've set up the IR sensor as instructed, and my output when debugging indeed shows that the ir sensor is... well... sensing objects. However, it's only sensing an object when it is extremely close to the sensor (like literally 1/8th to 1/16th of an inch). I get readings of 1024 up until i'm that close, then they drop off to ~10-20.

At first I thought I possibly had a defunct sensor (fortunately i bought two), but I'm having the same results with both. I'm using two 100ohm resistors in series in place of the 200ohm, but I assume that wouldn't make any difference.

Any light you could shed on this would be greatly appreciated as i'm so close to a finished project.

Thanks!

-jeremy

Yes your results from the IR sensor seem accurate. The one disadvantage of the IR sensor is that is must be mounted very close (sensor only reads very close objects). I was worried about it as well, but my tests showed I could get reliable results and it is a cheaper sensor than a proximity sensor (around $10+). To get reliable results I mounted my IR sensor on the side rail. It faced the broad support plate on the door providing a good reading. Be creative where you mount the IR sensor. Any location that will give you different readings when the door is open versus closed will work.




If you need I can post more pictures how I mounted the IR sensor. If you can't find a reliable location for the IR sensor that will place it within an 1/8th of inch of your door (doesn't matter if it's when it's closed or open) you could switch to a proximity sensor. A proximity sensor can be located much farther away and give you a significantly more accurate distance reading.

I think its great your duplicating the project. If you run into any other issues, feel free to post your questions, I would be glad to help if I can. Please post an update after you have completed it!

Hi, I've tried your application with some modification (I turn on/off a relay instead of open a garage door), but while connecting from a browser all works fine, from the Android application and also from the Android browser I can't connect to the netduino (in my case http://192.168.0.7/relay_on is the command). I exclude a problem in my LAN because if I browse the ip of the router (192.168.0.1) from android, I have no problem. The strange thing is that from any other pc on my lan, all works fine... the problem is only from my android smartphone. Any suggest?
If I put a breakpoint in the netduino application (in the ListenForRequest() method) the execution never reach this point.
Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

I have noticed some issues communicating between Android and the Netduino. It actually took me a long time to discover you can't step through your Android code and watch the HTTP client execute a call to the Netduino. Whenever I did step through my code it failed 100% of the time. Since this is just a demo app and my actual app involves a second IIS web server, that sits between the Android and the Netduino, I solved the issue by making up to 5 HTTP calls. That seems to work reliably for me.