Just replaced my zwave garage door controller - it died within the twelve month warranty, and Amazon was willing to refund my purchase, so I ordered an installed a new one (Go Control/Linear model).
There is an option on the Settings (hit Gear icon when looking the device in the Things list) that says:
Enable Switch Capability?
When I tap on it the options are:
Disabled
On=Open
On=Close
Can someone tell me what that is/does? I have Googled it and also searched in the forum and didn’t find that phrase.
Does this allow opening or closing the garage door when a particular switch (another Zwave device like a light switch) is turned on or off? Or is this designed for use w/a virtual switch?
Sounds like a custom device handler and the switch capability allows it to show up in apps/rules as a light switch. This means you could also add to Alexa and/or google home.
1 Like
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
3
I believe this means your Opener will be presented as a “Switch” to SmartApps, thus making it compatible with SmartApps that don’t directly support Capability Garage Door… eg, Alexa, Smart Lighting, SHM…
That is a custom device handler and it is great. Alexa normally won’t open or close a garage I think. But with the switch capability you can tell Alexa to ‘Turn on’ or ‘Turn off’ the garage door to open/close it.
Use a PIN and trust your friends if they hear it when they are over. Plus, at my house you can’t yell at it if there aren’t windows open, we tried for this very reason.
How do you use a PIN w/voice commands? Wasn’t aware you can do that - is that referring to an Alexa feature (I have Alexa but almost never use it) or a Google Home option, or ?
What I was thinking of doing was simply just not calling my garage door a garage door.
For example, my wife and I have a few pieces of furniture in the house that we refer to frequently, and since they are all cabinets it’s not clear what we’re referring to if we simply say “It’s in the cabinet” - we have to say something more detailed like “the cabinet in the living room” or “the cabinet by the water cooler.”
So since we’re very lazy and want to use as few words as possible, we’ve actually named some of our furniture. Being a Hobbit/LOTR geek (from my childhood obsession w/the books) we’ve named a couple of our cabinets Frodo and Gandalf (Frodo cabinet is smaller than the Gandalf cabinet). So now we can just say “I put it in/on Frodo” or “Can you get me the serving platter from Gandalf?” Perfectly clear (for us!) and of course it’s a lot more fun to get a platter from Gandalf than from a simple cabinet.
So I was thinking I would rename the garage door Balrog or Bombur or something like that (since it’s much bigger than Frodo or Gandalf) so that we can control the garage door via voice, but no stranger can shout into our window to open the “garage door.” No one’s going to dare to try talk to a Balrog. Too scary.
I don’t see why security through obscurity wouldn’t work. Though, now that you asked about the PIN, I’m not using the official Alexa integration. I’m using Ask Alexa:
So now we can just say “I put it in/on Frodo” or “Can you get me the serving platter from Gandalf?” Perfectly clear (for us!) and of course it’s a lot more fun to get a platter from Gandalf than from a simple cabinet. 