Need Help for Christmas Gift

Hardware
1

Hey=) So my husband has mentioned wanting the following items for programming our garage door to open remotely:
• Particle Photon / Particle Spark Core
• Particle [Spark Core / Photon] Relay Shield
• Particle Photon Kit (from store.particle.io)

I found the photon kit and the relay shield, but I haven’t found any type of photon/particle spark core. Was I mistaken in him requesting one of these??

Thanks,
Christine

2

Hey there,

The Spark Core was the predecessor of the Photon, and has been superseded by it as such. The Photon is better in all aspects, and should be preferred over the Core.

The Photon kit contains a Photon, so unless he wants at least two of them (which is very understandable if he does), you might not need to buy the ‘lone’ Photon. Then again, once he gets started, he’ll most likely want more of them anyhow :wink: They’re quite addictive :speak_no_evil:

Let us know if you need more info, glad to help.

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3

Thanks so much for you quick response=)

So I noticed that there is a deal on the Photon kit and Electron 2G kit right now. Is the Electron 2G kit something that he needs?

Thanks,
Christine

4

Unless he plans on building something that quires a cellular connection, he’ll most likely not be needing the Electron for now. It’s often used in things like asset trackers, if that’s something that’s of interest.

5

Great! Thanks so much for helping me out=)

1 Like
6

Hey Christine - I just built the garage door project you are speaking of.

I used a Photon. I used the makezine.com project they posted here to get me started. You’ll see a build sheet as well. There is a great video to go along with it.

https://makezine.com/projects/particle-core-garage-door-opener/

You’ll want to make note that they used the CORE and not the photon in the tutorial, so if you choose to go this path, the wiring will be slightly different.

I also setup ifttt to work with this setup so that i could control from google assistant. Let me know if you would like that code.

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7

What can your husband be lucky to have you as a woman!

8

Let us know if there is anything else that we can do to help you with the xmas gift! Check out the Holiday Tree Shield!

3 Likes