I have two applications I’m looking at that I’ve been waiting to do due since I first backed SmartThings.
Three garage doors - I’d like to detect if they’re open, and control state (along with notifications). Is the best model currently to pair an LFM-20 with a SmartSense Multi in position sensing mode? It’s not particularly cost efficient, especially as I’d have to buy three of the LFM-20’s.
A Mighty Mule driveway gate opener about 150 feet away from the house that may have range problems to my hub. I don’t know what the right thing to do here is.
I was going to do the LFM-20, but instead went with the Lowes Iris GD-00Z1 which works out to cost about the same as LFM-20 + sensor. It had one glitch on the second day where I had to exclude and re-include with Smartthings. It’s been fine in the weeks since. It takes five minutes to install and comes with its own wireless open/close sensor.
For my older garage door opener that needed replacing, I went with Chaimberlain MyQ opener with battery backup. It is the better option IMHO but only worth the $240 cost if you need to replace the entire opener for other reasons. Having never installed a full opener before I was pleasantly surprised that I could do it in about 90 minutes. With our frequent power outages, the battery backup is a nice to have for my wife’s garage spot.
I have the Ecolink garage door sensor on the third garage door. It has reported one false left open. There is a thread where others reported inaccuracies as well. Might want to avoid that sensor.
Could not be happier with my Arduino Uno + ThingShield setup using cheap magnetic reed sensors with my two garage doors. Total spend of $90 + about an hour or so of hacking and is rock solid in terms reliability.
I bit the bullet and ordered a few Fortrezz MimoLites based on further investigation I’d done on what solutions everyone was using. I was going to do the IRIS but the cost was a bit high for me.
I do have the Arduino kit and a reed switch that I’m going to hack with for my gate project, but I’ve been stalling on starting and wanted to get the garage doors monitored.
Thank you guys for responding, I’ll have to do a post with pics of my install when it’s done.
Let us know how it goes and which device type you end up using for your MIMOlite devices. I have not been able to get these working reliably and am curious if anyone else has better luck. Thanks and good luck!
I’m not sure - I have tried using the MIMOlite both as a garage controller and as a gate buzzer without any luck. When I first set it up, it DID have the jumper on, but I removed it and re-included the MIMOlite in SmartThings. I have tried various device types, including the recently-added “MIMOlite Garage Door Controller” device type without luck. Perhaps I didn’t exclude the device properly before re-adding without the jumper? Any advice would be great.
When I did it I’d removed the jumper first so they sort of just “worked”. That said, I don’t currently have the sensors hooked up as I’d already installed ST Multi’s on there. I haven’t figured out how to get the MIMOLite and the ST Multi to act like a single device yet so that it worked as a built in.
I’m using the “Smarthings Virtual Momentary Switch” device (I think that’s what it’s called). It just sort of works; well most of the time. Sometimes I have to hit it twice, but in a smartapp I could probably just put it in a while loop until the door was at the intended state.