CoopBoss after Groovy?

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
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For anyone following this thread who wants to keep their coop boss working:

  1. Get a switch with a Momentary Dry Contact relay - something like a ZooZ Zen17 or a cheap Zigbee one like this one. Use that to actuate the existing CoopBoss. That will leave important parameters (like the door jammed amperage rating) saved in the CoopBoss and allow the safety features to continue. You won’t be able to change the rating, but at least your last saved parameter will continue to work.
    The “Virtual” Garage Door you will be building in the following steps will actuate an open/close action using the manual open/close button that the CoopBoss already has.

  2. Get a Door/Window sensor. Doesn’t matter what kind or brand. You will be mounting this on your actual door that you built to open/close. This is needed by the Virtual Garage Door driver to detect a jammed or failed (aka “Unknown”) state that you can build routines from to notify you (the same way CoopBoss would notify on a jammed state).

  3. Visit Blue Yeti’s Virtual Hub Kit page, click the first link to their Virtual Hub Edge Drivers, and install the driver called Virtual Devices to your hub.

  4. Go to your SmartThings app, and tell it to search for new devices. You will see a new device called “Virtual Hub” installed. You can move it to the room of your choosing.

  5. Tap the Virtual Hub device and select the gear icon. You will be prompted for which type of device, like Door, Fan, Garage Door, Lock, etc. Select Garage Door. This creates a Virtual Garage Door device.

  6. Find the Virtual Garage Door you created, move it to the room you want it in, and rename it. Mine is “CoopBoss Reincarnated”.

  7. Visit the 3-dots menu and select settings. Set Cycle Time to the time it takes to open or close the door.

  8. Now you can add routines from that virtual door that are more useful than standalone routines. The virtual door can alert you when the door is open or closed based on a contact sensor, and you have some specific control over the actions that you would not have in normal routines, like number of seconds the open or close cycle time should take before the virtual door goes in to an error state (“unknown”) in the virtual device.

This virtual device simplifies the routines you would need to write to accomplish the same thing - very handy!

  1. Be sure to visit Blue Yeti’s Virtual Hub Kit page again and set up your Virtual Door and Virtual Contact Sensor based on his examples. “Garage Right” in his examples is the Virtual Door. “Door Right Contact” and “Door Right Relay” refer the physical devices. Once you set up according to his sample, you can use the button on the Virtual Door to open/close it and control other routines.

  2. The routines I added and found most useful with the virtual Garage Door were:

  • Coop Door Closing (Changes colors on a Hue lamp in the house so I can see when it is closing)

  • Coop Door Opening (same as above - just a different color for opening)
    You can add these functions to the ones in his examples.

  • Coop Door Open SUCCESS (Changes a Hue light to a specific color for 10 minutes to indicate success)

  • Coop Door Close SUCCESS (Same idea as above - just a different color)

  • Coop Door Jammed - sends a notification if the virtual door goes into an UNKNOWN state - usually that means it is jammed.

I hope this is helpful for anyone who hasn’t yet ventured into the world of virtual devices! Special thanks to @blueyetisoftware and @JDRoberts for the great discussion and inspiration!

Edit: Added step 9 to clarify you need to add those routines.

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