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 rapidly🤣) 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 control signal to change the relay state was working however you could not hear the “click” of the relay. Other relays worked as expected, it was as though the relays themselves or something got “latched” in the changed state.

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 have varying specifications regarding this. This meant I needed to find someway of using a relay with the Raspberry Pi instead of just using the GPIO straight to the garage door (in case of blowing up the Raspberry Pi).

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 have built. However there was one part (a major part at that) that was bought of Alibaba or something, I think it was the motor. This part was “off the back of a truck” so you couldn’t buy a replacement and other people couldn’t make one as well.