Cantilevered Driveway Remote Gate

[GuglioLS]

Pic 1
Overall picture of the gate.

There is a very interesting story behind our gate and where the parts came from. So bear with me. I have 14 pictures to post, please be patient with me and wait for me to post them all.

Once upon a time:
We needed an automatic “Estate” gate to keep our Alaskan Malamutes in and the “un desirables” out. For 20 years my wife and I would stop the car get out open the gate, get back in the car, drive through, stop the car, get back out, close the gate, get back in and drive off OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND AGAIN.

So one day after almost getting struck by lightning - I said to myself – self, enough is enough!

So here is the story behind where the materials came from, now please flash back about 15 years. In our home we have a basement, at one time the only way to get down there was, again to go outside and enter through the Bilco basement door. So – I built a home made elevator (sorry no pics as) it was dismantled to build - guess what THE GATE!
We have since added a garage and now the basement access door if from inside the garage.

Anyway here are the basic details of the gate:

40' long 5' tall gate made out of 2 & 1/2" steel pipe.
Reinforced with 5/8" rebar every 5 feet. The cantilever wheel support posts are 3" dia steel pipe. The holes for the support posts are 4' deep x 12" dia filled with concrete.
The pipe is suspended in the concrete so as to avoid rusting out from the bottom.

This type of gate is “Cantilevered” I.E. suspended by wheels attached to posts and balanced by it’s own weight. The advantage is that it opens & closes no matter how deep the snow gets as it does not touch the ground. The disadvantage is that the gate must be twice a long as you want it to open + about 1-2 feet. And if purchased and installed cost mega bucks about 5 to7 thousand dollars. This was built by me at around 1 thousand.

The remote control electronics are from an automatic garage door opener.
The real trick was to interface those electronics to a more powerful 1.5 hp reversible motor with an electric disk brake and 90* gear reducer to drive the whole thing. Being an Electronics Engineer with access to some “Spare” relays, & SCR’s etc sure helped. The pipe, motor, disk brake and gear reducer are what I “stole” from the elevator.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 2
Mechanical & Electronics Control Box cover – Fabricated by a duct work sheet metal shop in Albuquerque, NM. Inside is what moves the gate and is cemented into the ground four feet. You might notice the drive chain in the background and the conduit that houses the magnetic limit switches
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 3

Angle view of gate with drive chain, tensioning turnbuckle & Magnet for limit switch.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 4

View of my home made overhead Power Lines. I had to run power 600 feet from my barn to the gate. The wire came from a spool left over form when the electric company replaced all the power lines & poles out here. It was a trade for some blasting I did for them on a couple of pole holes in solid rock. If I had only started this project when they were out here I could have had “Professional Grade” overhead power lines.
Now that I have a Backhoe I will someday bury them underground.
Please, no questions or comments from the Power Police, NEC Police, Linemen, OSHA, ATF, etc. Unless you want to come out here and help me bury this!
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 5

Close up of a “Cantilever” wheel – it has needle bearings that I grease.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 6

Driveway Alert Transmitter

I work out of a home office and my Wife is a full time homemaker. We need to know when Family, Friends, Neighbors UPS, FedEx & the “un-desirables” show up at our driveway. We installed a Driveway Alert Transmitter with a 1000 foot range. We also have a means of opening & closing the gate from the house as well as with any of our remote transmitters in our vehicles, tractors, ATV’s etc.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 7

One of the lower Cantilever support wheels with drive chain tensioning turnbuckles.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 8

1.5 HP Motor, Disc Brake, 90* reducing gear & electronics.
One of the tricks was to get the disk break to disengage prior to starting the motor. I did this with an electronic time delay for the motor. The reason I used a disk break was to stop the gate INSTANTLY when commanded by any of the limit switches or the remote control. There is a large amount of inertia from the motor & the weight of the gate.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 9

Close up of the chain drive sprocket.
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[GuglioLS]

Pic 10

Details of how the drive chain is connected to the ends of the gate.
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[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