The first device I needed to make for my smart garage project was a roller-shutter controller. Yes, you can buy them. But where’s the fun in that?
I have already replaced the (crap) controller installed by the landlord with something a bit meatier: a Neco Rollermatic. This has three switched inputs for external buttons. Connect the ‘up’, ‘down’ or ‘stop’ terminals to ground to trigger an action (I think).
I went down the simplest possible route here: a NodeMCU on one of the very convenient bases you can get for them that breaks out all the pins, accepts a wide variety of input voltages, and offers connections for power at input voltage, 5V and 3V.
To this I added a 4-way 5V relay module and a level shifter to go between the 3V logic of the Node and the 5V the relay desires. You can sometimes get away without this but I’ve found it can make things flaky so better to spend an extra £1 and make it reliable.
I designed a case for all this in Fusion360 and printed it in PETG. You can download the STL files here. To finish it you just need some M3 threaded inserts and matching screws – the design is fairly unfussy about length but let’s say 10mm. Assembly is slightly awkward as the power jack for the Node Base protrudes through the rear cover but it’s not too bad. There are pins for mounting the main components that can either be melted over to secure them or just topped off with a dab of hot glue.
Code-wise I’ll just be using ESPHome for this. This makes it nice and simple to make the relay actions momentary based on a button press from the Home Assistant interface. Or to integrate actions into a macro – e.g. entry/egress.
You can see the device (minus lid, wires, and level shifter) in this little excerpt here: