Raspberry Pi Garage Door Status Indicator with Ultrasonic GPIO without ‘sudo’

As anybody who has a garage knows, sometimes the door get left open inadvertently. Since the door is usually not visible from inside the house, that is easily done. Most of the time, there is no harm, but, if left overnight, raccoons and other undesirables may enter and create havoc.

Raspberry Pi to the rescue. In short, what I did was mount an ultrasonic sensor (HC-SR04, from eBay, $2.00, free shipping from China) on the ceiling in one of the bays of the garage (our garage is a double with a single 5 m door). When operating, if the sensor finds that is measure less than 20 cm, then the garage door is open. If the distance is between 50 and 150 cm, then the garage door must be closed with a car parked in the spot. If the distance is greater than 150 cm, the door is closed with the car gone. (Total distance from ceiling to floor is 244 cm)

My primary Pi does temperature logging every minute (see earlier posts), so I decided to make the the garage door check a part of this process.

Since I used the wiringpi library as part of the temperature logging process, I do not need to invoke ‘sudo’ before starting python. However, the sample ultrasonic sensor script did use sudo, so I was forced to find a way around. In the end, I used Richard Ryniker’s gpio_control C program to export the required GPIO pins. I found it gives great results. Now I can run my Python program without using sudo.

Sometime the ultrasonic sensor gives erroneous results. Therefore, I take 20 readings (only takes less than 200 millisecond the accomplish), then drop the highest 3 and the lowest 3 readings and average the rest. This gives very accurate results. Then I write the output, i.e. the distance and the time to a text file so I can use it when a web request comes in.

Here’s the final code:

   1: def write_once(path, value):

   2:     f = open(path, 'w')

   3:     f.write(value)

   4:     f.close()

   5:     return

   6:  

   7: def checkGarageDoorStatus():

   8:     trigger = '/sys/class/gpio/gpio25/'   #TRIGGER

   9:     write_once(trigger + 'direction', 'out\n')

  10:     ftrigger = open(trigger + 'value', 'w')

  11:     

  12:     #pin_base24a = '/sys/class/gpio/gpio24/'   #RESET ECHO TO LOW FIRST

  13:     #write_once(pin_base24a + 'direction', 'out\n')

  14:     #f24a = open(pin_base24a + 'value', 'w')

  15:     #f24a.write('1')

  16:     #f24a.flush()

  17:     #f24a.close()

  18:     

  19:     echo = '/sys/class/gpio/gpio8/'  #ECHO

  20:     write_once(echo + 'direction', 'in')

  21:     write_once(echo + 'edge', 'both') #'both','rising', 'falling' are the keywords

  22:     #Note: On a longer (40'), thinner cable (24 AWG), I had to change the parameter in the above line to 'falling'.

  23:     #Also needed to subtract a constant of 6 cm from the distance total to arrive at the correct result.

  24:     #print "Ultrasonic Measurement"

  25:     #time.sleep(0.5)

  26:     z = 0

  27:     while z < 20:

  28:         fecho = open(echo + 'value', 'r')

  29:             

  30:         zero_last = fecho.read(1)

  31:         #sys.stdout.write('Initial pin value = {}\n'.format(repr(state_last)))

  32:     

  33:         po = select.poll()

  34:         po.register(fecho, select.POLLPRI)

  35:     

  36:     

  37:         z = z + 1

  38:         ftrigger.write('0')

  39:         ftrigger.flush()

  40:     

  41:         # Allow module to settle

  42:         #time.sleep(0.5)

  43:     

  44:         # Send 10us pulse to trigger

  45:     

  46:         ftrigger.write('1')

  47:         ftrigger.flush()

  48:     

  49:         time.sleep(0.00001)

  50:     

  51:         ftrigger.write('0')

  52:         ftrigger.flush()

  53:     

  54:         events = po.poll(1000)

  55:         t1 = time.time()

  56:         fecho.seek(0)

  57:         first_last = fecho.read(1)

  58:     

  59:     

  60:         events = po.poll(1000)

  61:         t2 = time.time()

  62:         fecho.seek(0)

  63:         second_last = fecho.read(1)

  64:     

  65:         if len(events) == 0:

  66:             #sys.stdout.write('  timeout  delta = {:8.4f} seconds\n'.format(t2 - t1))

  67:             nDistance = 0

  68:         else:

  69:             #sys.stdout.write('value = {}  delta ={:8.4f}\n'.format(state_last, t2 - t1))

  70:             TimeElapsed = t2 - t1

  71:             nDistance = TimeElapsed * 34300/2

  72:             #print zero_last

  73:             #print first_last

  74:             #print second_last

  75:             

  76:         #print ("Distance: ={:8.1f}".format(nDistance)) + " cm"

  77:         fecho.close

  78:         if z == 1:

  79:             lResult = [nDistance]

  80:         else:

  81:             lResult.append(nDistance)

  82:             

  83:     lResult.sort()

  84:     #print lResult

  85:     del lResult[19]

  86:     del lResult[18]

  87:     del lResult[17]

  88:     del lResult[2]

  89:     del lResult[1]

  90:     del lResult[0]

  91:     #print '\n'

  92:     #print lResult

  93:     

  94:     nTotalDistance = 0

  95:     for l in lResult:

  96:         nTotalDistance = nTotalDistance + l

  97:     

  98:     nAverageDistance = nTotalDistance/14

  99:     #print nAverageDistance

 100:     dDateTimeRecorded = datetime.datetime.now()

 101:     if (nAverageDistance > 5 and nAverageDistance  < 20):

 102:         cStatus = "OPEN"

 103:     else:

 104:         if (nAverageDistance > 30 and nAverageDistance  < 150):

 105:             cStatus = "CLOSEDWITHCAR"

 106:         else:

 107:             cStatus = "CLOSEDWITHOUTCAR"

 108:     with open('GarageDoorStatus','w') as file:

 109:         file.write("{}\n".format(cStatus))

 110:         file.write("{}\n".format(dDateTimeRecorded))

 111:         file.close()

 112:     return cStatus    

This is how it is called:

   1: def main():

   2:     os.system("gpio export 11 out")

   3:     os.system("gpio export 18 out")

   4:     os.system("gpio_control 25 export")

   5:     os.system("gpio_control 8 export")

   6:     wiringpi.wiringPiSetupSys()

   7:     wiringpi.GPIO(wiringpi.GPIO.WPI_MODE_SYS)

   8:     wiringpi.pinMode(11,wiringpi.OUTPUT)

   9:     wiringpi.pinMode(18,wiringpi.OUTPUT)

  10:     #wiringpi.pinMode(24,wiringpi.OUTPUT)

  11:     loadDrivers()

  12:     nSlaveCount = findNumberOfSensors()

  13:     lSlave = findSlaves(nSlaveCount)

  14:     cAmbientTemperature = "N/A"

  15:     while True:

  16:         wiringpi.digitalWrite(18,1)

  17:         checkTemps(nSlaveCount,lSlave)

  18:         wiringpi.digitalWrite(18,0)

  19:         if (checkGarageDoorStatus() == "OPEN"):

  20:             print "Open"

  21:             wiringpi.digitalWrite(11,1)

  22:         else:

  23:             print "Closed"

  24:             wiringpi.digitalWrite(11,0)

  25:         nCurrentSecond = datetime.datetime.now().second

  26:         time.sleep(60-nCurrentSecond)

Note that when the status is found to be open, GPIO Pin 11 is turned high. This I use to turn on an LED which I mounted next to the furnace thermostat in the living room. Now, in order to make this more attention grabbing, I wanted it to be a flashing LED. Of course the Pi could do this, but in this case that seemed like overkill. So I bought an LED that flashes all on its own, at about 2 Hz. (KLF-336HD-3P).

I also made it part of the web page that my Pi can produce (see earlier posts).

In case you are wondering, the first 7 lines show temperatures inside, outside and in my generation housing (see earlier posts).

Although it seems a rather trivial project, it was nonetheless very time consuming. Pulling wires from the utility room where the Pi  is located to the garage, as well as to the living room next to the thermostat (doing it decently, that is) takes far more time than you wish it would. Then, finding a workaround for sudoless ultrasonic sensing, fitting the new into the existing Pi setup, testing a flashing LED on the Pi (ya never know what it might do) all took its sweet time. But then, hey, it is all worth it when in the end it works and it is useful.

Raspberry Pi Ultrasonic Sensor. Use GPIO Without Sudo

Search the web, and you’ll find quite a few pages discussing the HC-SR04 ultrasonic distance sensor. It is cheap, easy to configure and great for experimenting or non crucial measuring jobs. When used on the Raspberry Pi, however, almost all examples I have seen force you to run the sensor application as superuser (sudo). This means that the entire application has elevated privileges. In general, this is not a good idea.

Search as I might, I was not able to find an example of a non sudo application that used an interrupt where timing was crucial. So I decided to do some research to find a way around this.

Background: I am trying to add distance measurement capability to my Pi, which already does temperature measurements and tracks the sump pump level using a second Pi. All this is done without using ‘sudo’, and since the new functionality is to be integrated into the existing functionality I had to find a solution. I am using Python 2.7 as my main development language.

I am using wiringPi in the existing setup, but it does not handle interrupts. So a Google search is next.

First, I found an article in the November 2012 edition of MagPi by Richard Ryniker entitled ‘GPIO and Interrupts’, which gave a good overview of sudo, interrupts and the like. You can read a pure text version of the article here, without having to look up the magazine version.

The first thing to take away from that is that if you want to use GPIO pins without using sudo you need to download and compile gpio_control.c from Richard’s site. All the instructions on how to compile and then copy and chmod the executable are embedded in the text of the download.

Once you have done that, then you can give a command like this

$ gpio_control export 23

which simply means any user can now use pin 23 without using sudo

To revert control once you do not need this anymore:

$ gpio_control unexport 23

Next, I studied his application for the maximum LED blink rate in Python. This explains how to write a value to a pin. After that, I studied his interrupt example, showing how to detect when a designated pin goes high (or low), i.e how to read the value of a pin.

I then modified the ultrasonic sensor ‘sudo’ application that Matt Hawkins wrote over at Raspberry Pi Spy, to account for the new sudo free approach using interrupts. When running the sudo version and this version, the results are virtually identical, any differences are probably due to the CPU load at that very instant.

Here is the application:

   1: #!/usr/bin/python

   2:  

   3: # Test interrupts.

   4:  

   5: import time,select,sys

   6:  

   7: def write_once(path, value):

   8:     f = open(path, 'w')

   9:     f.write(value)

  10:     f.close()

  11:     return

  12:  

  13: pin_base23 = '/sys/class/gpio/gpio23/'   #TRIGGER

  14: write_once(pin_base23 + 'direction', 'out\n')

  15: f23 = open(pin_base23 + 'value', 'w')

  16:  

  17: pin_base24 = '/sys/class/gpio/gpio24/'  #ECHO

  18: f24 = open(pin_base24 + 'value', 'r')

  19: write_once(pin_base24 + 'direction', 'in')

  20: write_once(pin_base24 + 'edge', 'both') #'rising', 'falling' are other keywords

  21:  

  22: print "Ultrasonic Measurement"

  23: state_last = f24.read(1)

  24: #sys.stdout.write('Initial pin value = {}\n'.format(repr(state_last)))

  25:  

  26: po = select.poll()

  27: po.register(f24, select.POLLPRI)

  28: f23.write('0')

  29: f23.flush()

  30:  

  31: # Allow module to settle

  32: time.sleep(0.5)

  33:  

  34: # Send 10us pulse to trigger

  35:  

  36: f23.write('1')

  37: f23.flush()

  38: time.sleep(0.00001)

  39:  

  40: f23.write('0')

  41: f23.flush()

  42: events = po.poll(600)

  43: t1 = time.time()

  44: f24.seek(0)

  45: state_last = f24.read(1)

  46: #print state_last

  47: events = po.poll(600)

  48: f24.seek(0)

  49: state_last = f24.read(1)

  50: #print state_last

  51: t2 = time.time()

  52: if len(events) == 0:

  53:     sys.stdout.write('  timeout  delta = {:8.4f} seconds\n'.format(t2 - t1))

  54: else:

  55:     #sys.stdout.write('value = {}  delta ={:8.4f}\n'.format(state_last, t2 - t1))

  56:     TimeElapsed = t2 - t1

  57:     nDistance = TimeElapsed * 34300/2

  58:     print ("Distance: ={:8.1f}".format(nDistance)) + " cm"

 

In theory, using interrupts is cleaner and leaner than the old way where the application sits in a loop, uses a lot of CPU cycles to check continuously whether or not the state of the pin has changed.