Summary
The goal for this project was to be able to control the garage door to my home remotely with a mobile device in an easy manner, so that I would not have to carry the home key or main garage remote around with me when leaving the house. I decided to do this by using an ESP32 microcontroller on a prototyping board to interface with the garage door motor controller. The ESP32 connects to my home internet and creates a simple web server that anyone who is connected to my router can access with the fixed IP address. Upon accessing the sever through a web browser, the client is presented with a simple web page that displays a button to trigger the garage door, that upon pressing, sends an HTTP POST request to the server, which controls the microcontroller to close a relay to actuate the garage door.
Currently, the ESP32 prototyping board is in a custom enclosure mounted near the garage door motor, and although it works, I would like to use the prototyping board for other things. The next step for this project would be to make a custom smaller PCB with just the bare ESP32 SoC and minimum components needed to fulfill its goal.
