Tag: Pi Garage
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Npm Broke Arm64 Pi Garage Builds
I know this sounds crazy right? Lets rewind a bit so we can try and understand why. In a previous post Material 3 + Flutter 3.16.0 Broke Pi Garage Theme I stated that you should pin core dependencies. Apart from the Flutter version there was another place that I did not pin dependencies specifically enough.…
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Material 3 + Flutter 3.16.0 Broke Pi Garage Theme
What happened? The release of Flutter 3.16.0 introduced something that caught me out and broke the theme in the Pi Garage companion mobile app. Although Material 3 has been “opt in” for quite a while (I couldn’t find since when) it is only in 3.16.0 breaking changes https://docs.flutter.dev/release/breaking-changes/material-3-default you can see that this version has…
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Pi Garage V2
It’s been a while since Pi Garage V2 has been released and I have not mentioned it on my socials. Since this is a major release I thought I would go into a bit of detail on to why I decided to make a major release version bump as well as the nitty gritty to…
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Pi Garage v1.8.0
Pi Garage version 1.8.0 has been released. In this version the mobile app has been given the ability to have multiple configurations saved. The main driver for this was so that other people who had a Pi Garage could simply give you the configuration details and you could add this as a second (or even…
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Pi Garage Relay Lock-up
After initial release with the Home Assistant mobile app performing the opening and closing it was observed that quick button presses (from my daughter pressing the button rapidlyš¤£) that this could cause a lock up of the hardware in a weird way. You could see the lights on the relay change to show that the…
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Open Source Repository Challenges
Making the project Open Source is a good thing as it allows others to learn from it but also to so that people can be assured that there is no nasty other software that is installed with the application. However as anyone on the internet can view the source code this introduces complexities that you…
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Pi Garage Realtime Communication
Pi Garage worked well for a while, however there was one thing that bugged me. When you would have 2 devices open on the home screen (in the mobile app) and you would open the door on one device the state would change from “closed” to “opening” to “open” but on the other phone it…
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Pi Garage Mobile App
Along with the backend part of Pi Garage I really wanted to have a mobile app (both iOS and Android) so that it would be easy for users to use Pi Garage without having to configure a 3rd party app (like Home Assistant) or via an API page (like Swagger). I have had experience with…
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Pi Garage Deployment
The next decision to make was how to deploy the backend application. I had many different ways that I could release the application. However there were some key considerations to make. This lead me to consider the following. NPM package As the backend is built in Node.JS it would be easy to just push the…
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Pi Garage Backend App Framework
As I had chosen to use a Raspberry Pi for the hardware this allows me to use any language and framework that I want as long as the Raspberry Pi supports it. To view the current Open Source code can see it here on GitHub. I new that I wanted to write the app in…
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Pi Garage Interface Board
For interfacing with the garage door I knew (from my one) that there was the ability to add a wired push switch to the garage door to “toggle” it. However I had no idea what voltage/current this used as it was not listed in the manual. I also knew that other garage doors would potentially…
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Pi Garage Base Hardware
For the hardware I made it my mission to use as much common off the shelf components as I could that had a long supply life. I recall an Open Source touch rotary switch that had a small LCD screen in the centre of it. I thought it looked like something that Tony Stark would…