Missed Opportunity
He could have used "open sesame", ..... but he didn't.
A clever coder who goes by the name DarkTherapy has created an iPhone app and interface for the Raspberry Pi that allows it to open a door. Not just any door, mind you, but a motorised garage door. As you'll see in the video below, an iPhone is a far snappier remote control than your average door zapper. The project works …
During a training exercise for a call centre many years ago, my group was asked to think about the sort of things callers wouldn't like to hear. Could we, for example, think of an alternative way to express the perennially annoying "The computer says no". My first thought was "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I cannot do that". Alas, my poor reproduction of HAL's smooth tones forbade my colleagues from getting the reference.
me: cancel... have you ever used Siri?!
Anyway... surely you could modify the software to check you are within range first. Since you can say "Siri remind me to buy milk when I get to work" for instance. Did you not read the "super pre-alpha" description, and the fact this is a proof of concept only.
Seriously, you bunch of luddites! Picking holes in R&D projects because they're not ready for mass-market, well duh.
Siri Proxy looks amazing. A few points, since it's not described in the article:
* It's a *proxy* for *Siri*. i.e. you do some DNS magic to make Siri go to your proxy instead of Apple. So, no jailbreak required.
* It can handle commands apparently specified in English (e.g. "open the pod bay doors, Siri", which I damned well hope this garage door opener uses, otherwise its creator loses major geek points!)
I think the story here isn't about a garage door opener, it's about SiriProxy, and maybe a bit about making that talk to a Pi, or Arduino. The sky's the limit for what you could do with this. Love it!
Suricou, sadly, makes a good point above about what happens when Apple start to encrypt Siri traffic. Although if you're reliant on this I guess what happens is you don't upgrade :)
29 up votes! Must be some sort of record.
Whilst I do enjoy your post, I'd also like to run up the up vote counter to see what happens. Crash the web page? Counter wrap around to negative numbers? Lawdart wins vast wealth?
I encourage everyone to up vote lawndart's message!
Yes, I am a trouble maker.
On the sound effects, surely proper Thunderbirds stuff. Speakers loudly playing "D-D-Dum, d-d-d-dum..."(see note 1) on receiving the command. Some improbably noisy hydraulic sounds as the door opens. And, to fully use the computational power, have leylandii in pots along side the drive that tilt outwards.
You know it makes sense.
1) I should have been a musician, me.
As an enthusiast for both RaspberryPI and Arduino, I would have thought that Arduino would have been more suited to this task. It's a basic microcontroller, rather than a fully specked computer. It's also smaller and cheaper and comes in many different packages suitable for connection to a circuit board.
Yes, arduino would do the same thing, but I'd then have to add wifi/Ethernet and a way of it intercepting Siri requests.. It would have cost about the same in hardware but the pi has the advantage of using passwordless logins to other networked devices, such as my laptop or XBMC running on my Apple TV. I can ask siri to play media on my XBMC or shutdown/reboot my laptop for example, not so easy from an Arduino.
Yes, I didn't mention that often I've found myself making things which use seemingly inappropriate hardware for reasons other than that of the task in hand. I will also be dedicating some time in the new year to really getting to grips with the RasPI interfacing with electronics and punting data around a network. I'm thinking ethernet connected Geiger counter, which would be doable on the Arduino, but will allow me to make a framework for other home monitoring projects so the RasPI can host them, graph them and run a database etc etc.
Yes, but ... hardware these days is so cheap. The really "pricey" item is actually the time that one has to spend hacking it into doing ones bidding.
Quite a few of the sub USD 5,00 MSP430 micro-controllers have more RAM, more "disk" (flash), more MIPS and more I/O bandwith than my first Dell 286 PC - which cost me GBP 1200!
The next step would be to tie it with the iPhone ring-fenced location thing so that it automatically opened the garage door as you drove up your road. It would have to monitor your speed too, so it could tell that you are driving, not walking.
The only snag is that Apple Maps currently thinks I live a couple of miles away from my house. I'd have to drive to where it thinks I live to trigger the thing, then race back before the doors had timed out and shut themselves again.
But I'm sure they will fix it - eventually!
Marvin, I have a REAL door for you to open - 10' by 40', 3/4 hp 220 volt motor, it is the door to my hangar. I'll buzz the field, call the door on my phone and you can have the hangar open for me when I taxi up to it after landing. Oh yeah! Note to self, don't try flying through the hangar a la' Bond, there's no back door on it to open, and that's gonna hurt if I try it. And have a Diet Coke ready for me, stirred, not shaken.