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Cool Android Hack of the Day: Garage Door Opener

Categories: Android, GPhone
By: , IntoMobile
Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 8:21 PM

Adding to the growing list of Android hacks is a new garage door opener from Brad Fitzpatrick. The hack does exactly what you think it does… opens your garage door! I would do it no justice trying to explain what he did, so here it is in his words:

I got it all working. I now have an Android Activity (GarageDoorActivity) which interacts with an Android Service I wrote (InRangeService), letting me start and stop the service’s wifi scanning task. The service gets the system WifiManager, holds a WifiLock to keep the radio active, and then does a Wifi scan every couple seconds, looking for my house.

When my house is in range, it does the magic HTTP request to my garage door opener’s webserver (HMAC-signed timestamped URL, for non-replayability/forgeability if sniffed) and my garage door opens. Complete with a bunch of fun Toast notifications (like Growl) and Android Notifications (both persistent ongoing notifications for background scanning, and one-time notifications for things like the garage door actually opening).

Now the really cool thing about this (to me at least) is if you have the know-how and the patience, you can do this yourself! Brad has released the source code for his nifty garage door opener. Gotta love open source!

[Via: AndroidGuys]

About The Author

James Falconer

James was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. Almost 15 years ago he started out in the 'real world' as a web and graphic designer. Through the years he has finely tuned his skills in SEO, internet marketing, conversion strategy, and project management. To date, he runs his own successful consulting business where he advises companies all over the globe. A co-founder of www.crackberry.com, and sole proprietor of www.mactropolis.com, James in recent years has become very active in the tech blogosphere. Online community building and strategy is fast becoming one of his passions. Watch for James' no frills attitude, unique perspective and to-the-point comments here on IntoMobile!

  • Gimp

    Nice. Even though the scope of getting it to work is beyond my capabilities, it is still pretty cool.

  • um_man

    i see the code, but what do I do with it?

  • newbie

    can someone please post a guide on how to do this?

  • http://www.aaronsdoorservice.com/ Aaron

    Agree with you James. Gotta love Open Source. Seriously, this is a nifty program. I am not a programmer but I think it is really cool to unlock your garage door using your Android powered phone.

  • http://www.damiandouglasgaragedoor.com/ Damian Douglas

    Yes a step-by-step guide will help with this. I am not a programmer but this is interesting to me as a professional. 

  • http://www.garagedoorrepairkatytexas.com/ LoneStarKaty

    Nice. Really nice. I don’t know much about this gadget either but it just seems really cool. How about that? Google seem to be getting into everything and all things.

  • http://www.garagedoorrepairkatytexas.com/ LoneStarKaty

    Nice. Really nice. I don’t know much about this gadget either but it just seems really cool. How about that? Google seem to be getting into everything and all things.

  • http://www.garagedoorwoodlands.com/ woodlandsgarage

    You see the code? Where? I am not all that computer savvy but it will be interesting to see what the code looks like. Where did you see the code?

  • http://www.tyrebaydirect.com/1007-Garage_Equipment.html Garage Equipment

    Garage door opener is one of the best ways to increase the safety, convenience and efficiency of a garage door. It  is also adds a new level of convenience to daily tasks.   

  • Borntek

    Did anyone get a step by step on how to use this , much props to to the coder who wrote this your awesome