Android app to monitor & open and close garage door

Have you ever wanted to know if your garage door is open without having to go and check it? There have been many blog posts to light an LED when you leave your garage door open, but I want something more convenient. I decided to write an Android app that would allow me to monitor my garage door and even open or close from anywhere. I am going to provide complete instructions for building the required hardware and the android app code.

Monitor your garage door with an Android app

What is required? We need to build the following:

• Using a Netduino board (or an Arduino board with an Ethernet shield) build a sensor to detect if the garage door is open or closed. I chose an infrared phototransistor so I would not have to make physical contact with the door and because it's cheap! Like $1.13 cheap!
  Build and program a garage door sensor
• To open or close the garage door I wired an Optoisolator to a spare garage door opener.
  Build and program a garage door opener
  

  

  Open and close garage door with your Netduino

• Write a program (or you might hear it referred to as a sketch) to check the sensor and determine if the door is open or close and report it back over HTTP
• Even though it's not required, I wrote a second RESTful webservice to talk to the Netduino web server (see diagram). That way the Netduino webserver is never exposed outside my private network. I have another computer with the RESTful webservice that has a layer of authentication that is exposed to the internet.
• And finally an Android app that will display if the garage door is open or closed as well as open or close it. Here are step by step instructions (with complete source code) for writing the Android App.

I will be covering each step with a detailed post.