If you often forget to carry the key of your Garage, and feels irritated when you are in hurry, then you must try this DIY Fingerprint Scanning Garage Door Opener. Of course you can buy any Finger Print Door opener from the market, but this DIY Garage Door Opener is much cheaper and very easy build.
This Garage Door Opener mainly uses Finger Print Sensor, ATtiny85, ATmega328 and a 16x2 LCD. LCD kit from Sparkfun has been used here, which comes with ATmega328 to control the LCD, so this same ATmega328 is used here to control the whole process in this project.
Process is simple, ATmega328 communicates with the Finger Print Sensor (FPS) and checks the finger print data, if finger print matched with the stored finger print then it sends the signal to ATtiny85 chip, which is connected to the Garage Door Opening Button through a NPN transistor. So after receiving output from ATtiny, NPN transistor allow current to pass and garage door opens. Whole setup is first tested on Breadboard.
FPS, LCD, ATmega328 and other circuitry have been fixed in a beautiful 3D printed white color box, which is installed outside the Garage Door. And ATtiny with other components is installed inside the Garage. A buzzer is used for indication and LCD for displaying messages and instructions. The whole setup is powered by 9v battery. A Limit Switch has been used to save the power, it detects whether the Case is opened or closed, if case is closed then power is not being supplied to the circuit.
ATtiny85 is programmed to open the door when it receives signal from the ATmega328. We can program ATtiny using the Arduino board. The program and process to burn ATtiny is given in the mentioned Instructable. Arduino board is also used to program ATmega328, you just need to replace the Arduino’s ATmega chip with this ATmega chip to program it. Here is the code for ATmega328.
This Door opener is not limited to just open the Electronic Garage door, it can be used to create different kinds of simple motorized locks. Like shown below, the same lock has been used to lock the ‘safe’ or ‘chest’, by using Servo, it just need some design to lock it.
Finger Print Sensor has its own memory and you can use it to store new finger prints, of your family members, to open the Garage door, using this project. Also we can display different messages to each one. Check the Video below.
