Now it was time to take out my Voltmeter and see if I could test my theories of how the control board worked. The Vehicle Sensor (FM138) likely also simply shorts out the connections between the connection named “Exit” to “Common”.The Push Button Control (FM132) really just does short out the connection named “Cycle” to ground (labeled as “Common”.Reviewing this diagram it appears there’s a decent chance the following is true: Buried in the back, I found this very useful diagram that described how each of the various accessories connected to the control board module of the gate: A diagram describing how the various accessories are connected to the control board of a Mighty Mule gate opener. With this in mind I dug through the Installation Instructions that came with the gate. What intrigued me wasn’t the accessory itself, but rather if the control board of the gate opener perhaps provided something I could hook into with a DIY device. It was an intriguing, although very expensive ($165), accessory that detected a vehicle trying to exit and automatically opened the gate for you. I didn’t want to have to carry my keys to go on a walk though (not to mention spend $60 dollars in keyfobs) so I kept digging and I discovered part number FM138. Looking at their accessories, I could solve by purchasing a couple of part number FM135 (a $20 dollar remote for the gate) for everyone in the house’s keys. The second problem to solve was opening the gate from outside the property. ![]() For these purposes there is part number FM132 which looked awful similar to a simple momentary push button doorbell you mounted on the inside of the property, behind the gate. The first was opening and closing the gate from within the property, but without using the remote. Looking at their accessories, I focused in on two of them that seemed to provide a solution to the problems I wanted to solve. But I figured there must be a better way and it turns out I was correct - I just built my own! Now of course the company that makes Mighty Mule gate openers has a whole store full of accessories to solve all of these obvious limitations for us (if you’re willing to spend the money of course). Even if the car was in the driveway, there was no way for us to open the gate from the outside of the property (say we went for a walk).This meant if one of us left the house in the car the other couldn’t open or close the gate from inside the property. The only way to open the gate was using the remote, which lived in the car.That was great for the car, but now that the gate was closed all the time we discovered a few problems: ![]() Now that it’s installed we can keep the gate closed all the time (allowing us to let the dog out in the backyard without risk of him running away).Īs part of the standard package it comes with a wireless receiver and transmitter very similar to a garage door opener. ![]() ![]() When we got our new dog Hercules, I decided that it was time to make it useful so we bought an automatic gate opener – a Mighty Mule MM360. It wasn’t a particularly useful thing for us - we didn’t have any particularly good reason to keep the gate closed, and to do so would require us to constantly get in/out of the car to open/close it manually. When we purchased our house it came with a very nice aluminum gate for the driveway that had been installed by a previous owner. Rather than purchasing an expensive WiFi-enabled smart gate opener, build one yourself with a few dollars in components – I’ll show you how.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |