I’m 100% with you on everything you wrote, John.
The only thing I’d like and would trust SmartThings to do with my garage openers is to notify me that the door is open in a number of cases. But I’d never trust it to automatically close or open a garage door.
I keep eyeing sensors for my two garage doors but it hasn’t become important enough for me to pull the trigger.
That’s what I have done: ZWave garage door tilt sensors + contact sensor on the service door. The three are aggregated on a virtual switch, indicating at least one door is open or all are closed, and when our house switches to Evening Mode if the virtual switch is “on,” Alexa chimes in every half hour to say, “Alert! One of the garage doors is open!”
Beats having a neighbor out walking his dog tell me the next morning I left a door open all night! 
Of course, the extra sensors wouldn’t be needed if the integration with the openers was present, as the OP suggests…
Yeah I think it’s a matter of comfort and risk tolerance whenever you’re talking about automating your garage door. For me, I actually do have my garage door open automatically whenever I return home in ST, but only under specific conditions, (specific time period during day, when not in “Sleep Mode”). Even my wife is not comfortable with her own automation, hence, this automation is only applied to my phone. But it works wonderfully and I love it.
My other garage door automations includes when ST+Homekit detects we all left the house and someone forgot to close garage door for certain timeframe, to auto close, but only in certain modes (so that if I’m washing car or working in garage, the door doesn’t close on me).
But Meross and even MyQ native apps has basic automations if garage door was left open for extended period of time at night. I also use MyQ automations at late night to auto close if door was left open at certain intervals.
I spent a fair bit of time automating our garage doors a few years ago, with much of the effort directed towards ensuring safety, security and reliability. Today those automations—a combination of SmartThings rules, webCoRE pistons, and various planned redundancies, still work perfectly. Many of our rules and conditions sound quite similar to yours. Ultimately, with all the fail-safes that we have built in, we are actually more comfortable having those automations that we would be otherwise. My wife is a big fan as well.
You’re still using WebCore for ST?
I had to move webCoRE to Hubitat, and I use HubiThings Replica to replicate or “mirror” all my ST devices so that I can automate them with either RM or webCoRE.
I have some 70-odd rules in ST, but for complex automations I prefer the more sophisticated tools that webCoRE offers. HubiThings made it super easy to transition.
That’s hilarious. I actually added Hubitat for WebCore as well. But I didn’t copy everything over from ST, but instead use virtual switches with Google Home being the “middle man” for my WebCore automations and ST devices. Luckily ST is robust enough where I can get 90% of all my automations needs.
I had a similar approach until HubiThings came along and simplified everything. Now it all feels like one ecosystem to me now. It’s also possible that Hubitat may provide some additional options with regard to replacing MyQ. Going the Meross route as a backup for now, but ratgdo intrigues me as well.
It’s also a matter of use-cases. I’d hate for the lady who takes care of our cats when we’re away for a weekend to have the door close unexpectedly. Or for my son-in-law to return from an early morning run to find the door closed.
And then there’s the general unreliablity of geo-location. It’s stopped now but I had a run of several weeks where my phone would occasionally report that I was “away” at a random time in the middle of the night. Then the phone would decide I had returned some time later. I would not want the garage door to open due to this glitch. It’s annoying enough that it was turning off my Nest Outdoor cameras (not via SmartThings, there’s no useful integration between Nest cameras and ST).
I’ve looked at the MyQ native notifications in the past and didn’t find them adequate for my preferences but I’ll look again.
Sounds like just the thing! Are you using the Ecolink tilt sensors?
I’m out in the country in a small gated neighborhood. I’m not worried about theft or intrusion by people. But I have had multiple neighbors who have had critters move in from leaving their doors open. Ringtail cats, raccoons, and a couple of rattlesnakes!
Exactly! They’ve been pretty reliable…
For sure. Really depends on how you set up your conditions for triggering the automations. I can say using different location modes, virtual switches, and timelines does help— especially when you want to de-activate automations. For example, i never just have a simple Auto-Close based on the door being opened for just an extensive period of time. Instead, i have it auto-close only during sleep mode or during time between 12a-6a. Etc…
Depending on your phone, i found using Homekit for my iPhone’s Presence sensor has been the most reliable with rock solid performance so far. (And I’ve tried almost all presence solutions - ST, Google, Alexa, Webcore, Life360, Hubitat, Homekit).
If interested, I use the Hubitat Homekit integration with Homekit for a virtual “presence” switch with my Homekit Presence detection. The virtual presence switch is then incorporated within the automations in ST, Webcore, Hubitat, Google, Alexa, etc…
Google Pixel.
Some of my geo-location issues are due to the house having a metal roof and mostly stucco exterior. One of the layers of stucco is metal mesh. GPS doesn’t function inside. Google knows the location of my Wi-Fi so that usually compensates. Except sometimes it doesn’t.
Anyway. I’m dragging this thread farther and farther from its topic. It’s a bad habit…
I hadn’t noticed 
!
Just figured you guys were demonstrating to MyQ and Chamberlain/Liftmaster that we have other ways to get things done 
Nice to be back on track ! 
After consideration, @JohnRichard , who originated the other thread, asked me to move these posts to a new thread, so they don’t get mixed in with the discussion of his campaign suggestion. So here we are. 
One thing I wanted to add to the safety considerations is that I strongly recommend to friends who are considering automating a garage door that they add an inexpensive camera inside so that they can check the garage before doing a remote close. I think that solves many of the safety considerations, including the unfortunately all too frequent issue of a car parking partway out of the garage while unloading, and then having the garage door close on it When someone away from home issues the close request. There have been multiple reports of this problem in the community over the years. 
In my case, as a wheelchair user, I’m more concerned about someone having fallen with an arm or leg crossing the threshold of the garage door. That’s typically low enough that it won’t break the IR beam that stops the garage door from closing. 
So, just in terms of my own needs, I am all in favor of getting a notification that the door is left open. But I want to check it with a Camera before issuing the close. 
All very good ideas. I actually have a camera in my garage, but haven’t really thought of family members using it for safety check before closing/opening the garage door.
I do, however, use a very simple safety mechanism by just blocking the IR sensors with a box or bucket or something - whenever I’m working in garage and don’t want any automations. 
Short answer, yes. I use some garage door automation. They are all centered around ensuring nobody leaves the door open at night. The first is to close it at 10pm if it is open and there is no motion in the garage. The second closes it between 10pm and 7am when the garage motion sensor goes to no motion.
I don’t do any open automation. I tried setting up a “coming home” with the presence sensor but found it would randomly trigger to open even when I was miles away.