Cantilevered Driveway Remote Gate

[GuglioLS]

Pic 11

Magnetic limit switch details.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic12

Overall view of the drive mechanism & Electronics
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 13

On the end of the motor shaft is a rotation sensor. Garage door openers have this to determine several things 1. Is the motor tuning when commanded? If not, stop and reverse if it is closing. Or 2 stop if trying to open. 3. How far has the motor traveled? (counts revolutions) if the motor keeps going & going then there must be a problem – no limit switch or broken chain, if this happens then the motor is turned off.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 14

Final view of the 600+ feet of home made overhead power lines.

The End.

 

[TBH_Farms]

Thanks for the pictures. That's quite the gate setup you have there. I may have to stea, er, adapt some of your ideas for our place.

And as a former lineman, I can say that your power lines look OK to me... /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[bebster]

Great project! I'm curious about the Driveway Alert Transmitter... looks like a cell phone antenna on top of it. Does it detect motion and then send an alert signal out? Did you make that or can it be bought?

 

[Volfandt]

Looks great.
To give your wife more security when she opens the gate for who-knows who you could go with a wireless camera w/sound or one thats wired. 600' is doable. There are wireless cams that are advertised to go that far and coax will carry well over that. You can feed the video to a dedicated monitor or use a modulator and distribute it to all your TV's if they are already on cable.

I don't have a gate but I have a driveway alarm and a wireless camera setup to cover my 200' driveway. Once you here it go off we can turn any of our TV's to channel 92 (modulator) and see who's comeing down our drive.

Another option is voice only but gives you control of the gate also.
Viking makes an integrated voicebox with contact closures that would allow your visiters to "call" you and you can talk back & forth before you hit a touchtone key to open the gate. You'd need a minimum of 2 pair (4 conductor) between the gate unit and house unit. It will work upto 1000'.

I wanted a gate but the Mrs nixed it for now. I do like you setup much better than a swing gate.

Volfandt

 

[scott_vt]

Wow Larry,
What a project!!! Real nice job. All I can think of is being a teenage kid showing up for a date with your daughter and seeing all that, I think I would turn the car around and head south /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif I guess its OK for me to say that , both my kids are grown and out of college /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
Thanks for sharing.

scotty

 

[midlf]

Great work on the gate. We had similar commercial units at work. They never worked worth a darn. I suspect yours will work a lot better, and if it doesn't you will figure out the corrective cure.

That is the most impressive 120V power feed I've ever seen. You may have addressed this but an overhead feed like this need lightning arrestors on each end. House end to protect the house wiring, gate end to protect the gate electrics. These need to be actual lightning arrestors not the more common surge protectors. Large electrical supply houses should have them. Especially true in your area with the storms you have there.

 

[Farwell]

Don't think the driveway alert system is attached to the antenna. The little green box has its own little wire antenna. The system is called Reporter I think. I have one on my driveway and it works great except in the middle of the night when the deer come to feed from my apple trees.
The antenna may be part of the remote control system governing the gate opener.
I am really impressed by the set-up
Farwell