A new life - irving reborn after near fatal accident

[cropwell]

Trying to source automatic door openers for double front doors... stupidly expensive even on Aliexpress! After all, its just a motor/gearbox and an arm and some crude position/current sensing for end points and obstacle detection... can't be that hard to make one

Stepper motor, ballscrew, driver, power supply, couple of microswitches, Arduino... can't be that hard to make one

[mike os]

hard part is the motion detection (without detecting he door) must ensure that any detection either stops the motors & goes free or smart enough to know which way to move (open or closed as required to release...and limiting the power if someone or something gets trapped behind or between

[irving2008]

actually the obstacle detect is the easy bit... just need to monitor the current draw by the motor over a few open/close cycles to learn the profile... any deviation from that is a 'stop & back off, wait, try again' cycle (exactly how my lift doors do it).

The harder bit is working out the actual mechanism. Standard units don't use ballscrews, just a motor and gearbox turning a shaft and an articulating (low torque/more complex engineering) or sliding (simpler, but higher torque and higher maintenance/wear) arm.