GarageBuddy

GarageBuddy is an easy-to-use, mobile-friendly web application that intelligently opens and closes your garage based on the location and ignition status of your Ford vehicle.

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Inspiration

We're all humans and we all make mistakes. In my family, my brother has crashed into the garage far too many times forgetting to open it before backing up. Additionally, we have all experienced a time when we forgot to close the garage when leaving the house. GarageBuddy was made to give you peace of mind and much more.

What it does

  • GarageBuddy links your home garage to your Ford connected vehicle.
  • When located inside of the garage and the car's engine status is turned on, the garage will automatically open.
  • Upon leaving the radius (radius is set to 100 meters), the garage will automatically close or ensure it is closed.
  • Upon re-entering the radius, the garage will automatically know to open.

How we built it

  • GarageBuddy is made using Python, Flask, and JavaScript on the front-end. The back-end (which will not be running during judging since it incurs charges) is a Python script that reads user information from the front-end to intelligently decide when a garage should open or close.

Challenges we ran into

  • Obtaining garage devices from a MyQ account and displaying them to the user.
  • Intelligently opening and closing the garage door based on longitude and latitude of the car.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • I started writing code for this project about ten days ago. In addition to being a part-time Master's student and having a full-time job, I am very proud of what I have accomplished and will definitely continue to make GarageBuddy even better.

What we learned

  • I barely had any experience with Flask, so I was able to learn a new technology and I absolutely love it! Will definitely be using it for more personal projects and competitions.

What's next for GarageBuddy

  • I will be tweaking my algorithm for GarageBuddy to minimize the number of API calls to the car. Polling was the only way to achieve the functionality I wanted, however by polling intelligently (understanding if the car is too far from the garage), I can decrease API calls significantly. Possibly polling heavily when the car is near the garage and very infrequently when it is far away.
  • The UI and error-handling will be far better in the future as well.

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