Garage Door Status (Open/Closed)

It would be great if Sense could identify a device a something with two states that alternate with each activation. So the user could set the current State (Open) and then the next time Sense detected the device active it would toggle the current (Closed).

Then have a simple interface to show the current status for all the devices that are assigned binary states. Plus it would then be possible to use the current state to trigger IFTTT to send notifications or turn lights on etc…

This won’t work. As someone who has two types of garage door openers and monitoring I would ask you what would happen when someone walks under the door and it returns to open? Sense would have no clue.

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If you have a Chamberlain or Liftmaster you can do this with many of the newer doors. If they are “myQ” they have it already and there’s a kit available for older doors. No doubt there are others as well but that’s what I’ve got and it works well. In some locations with these doors you can have in-garage delivery from Amazon which is also pretty cool. They call it “Key by Amazon in garage delivery”

Allen: One of the things that I pay close attention to is the amount of time that a device has been in the last state. Not sure where it is but, the bottom of the device screen (maybe) it says something like 'off for 2m35" ’ or 'on for 2m35" ’ Don’t get me wrong I do understand the binary thought you have… Just an alternative. Send me a PM and I will tell you about my binary week of the year display… Later…Gerry

@dottat.mobile I understand what you are saying and of course you are correct, things happen that would cause the state of the garage door open/close status to be incorrect. But for the majority of time it would be correct. If I notice it has missed a transition it would not be a problem to manually correct the state.

Even with an occasional incorrect state I think the benefit outweighs the the small number of times it would be incorrect.

If for some reason you notice your garage door misses lots of transitions and is wrong more than you are willing to accept, you would always be able to turn off the binary mode notifications and you would be exactly where you are today. No harm no foul

Problem is that no company is going to want to make someone believe something as critical as your garage door is closed when it’s not. The first time someone comes home to a ransacked house because sense told them it was closed and the bad guys walked right in.

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Not quite true - the myQ apps from LiftMaster/Chamberlain do indeed specify whether the door is opened or closed. I have min connected to HomeKit, so I can also use Siri to open and close my garage doors when biking.

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That’s exactly my point. I have both versions of their product and one uses sensors on the door to detect position and the other uses motor position. There are NO false positives using their products. Sense would never show open or close because they have no way of knowing.

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Not to pile on, but I agree that Sense is not a good detection mechanism for the status of a garage door. I’ve used a myQ kit with my older opener for a few years now, and it’s been excellent. I’ve also connected it to Apple’s Homekit without a myQ bridge using Home Assistant.

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Also… for why it would not work in my home is that I have 5 garage doors… the 2 attached to the house use one kind of identical opener and the 3 detached use a different brand but are all 3 identical. So fortunately sense can tell when any one of the doors attached to the house is opened or closed and sense can differentiate and tell when any one of the detached doors is opened or closed. BUT sense can not differentiate between two (or 3) identical door openers under identical configurations so the state would never be accurate.

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This could work. If you have ever looked at your meeter at the time your garage door opens and then again when it closes it does not look the same.

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But not true for everyone - I have 3 identical garage door openers and Sense detects the opening and closing of each one as the same event… Here’s an open and close sequence on the same door, both detected by Sense.

Maybe if mine were consistent like this one, sense would find it.

i had a liftmaster 888lm myq wall unit, worked great for years until it died and it became a big liability (has a very high tendency, when it dies, to open the garage door without your knowledge), and like many others i got a free “issue fixed” replacement but i no longer trust it as the design is same (super capacitors may go bad over time, and it will randomly open the garage door). i now rely on sense to monitor garaged door activity.

Couldn’t you just use the alerting in the MyQ app to give you realtime alerts?

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in my case, alerting only works if the myq wall panel works properly. like so many others that have owned a 888lm over a couple years, it will eventually go bad and open the garage door without your knowledge. just checkout the reviews on liftmaster’s own website for the 888lm.

@kevin1 i have 2 myq2s and am curious how you connected yours to homekit… did you have to buy the myq bridge? they say its one more thing to buy… its just like a network device that can stay in your study! telling siri to open the garage door is handy. Though I did use IFTT to automatically close down the garage when I leave the house… one drawback is that it waits till I go about .3 to .5 miles before iftt detects it… no way to change the geo-fence radius. I have not found a way to “auto open” if I am close to the house etc. Debating if I should get the bridge.

I bought the extra MyQ Home Bridge (MYQ-G0303-SP). Worthwhile for me since it lets me use Siri to close and open the garage door when biking.

If you’re worried about the geo-fence radius, why not just reach up and push the button on the visor? You’d probably be able to watch it close!

@2uskiwis thats funny! @kevin1 i wanted to build one with an arduino or raspberry pi… i just have not found it on instructables yet!

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