LFM-20 Evolve for garage door

I created my own relay device handler to run some debug and got the following message;
error java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException: Execution time exceeded 20 app execution seconds: 126269409135900
Clearly I’m having communication issues with the relay. I’ll try disconnecting it and reconnecting it and maybe restart my hub as well.

Moved the hub a foot farther from my router and restarted it. Seems to be working now.

Good to hear that, if you still have issues What helped me a lot was to include another z-wave device in the middle of the Relay and the hub (Or other zwave device working fast), I know that is an extra device with cost, but after I did that and the repair, the communication improved, also I have my router and hiub close but not stuck together (1-3 feet distance between).

Also to improve the signal of the Relay, I joined the Antena with another antena from an old router that I disassemble, and it helped indeed. this is how the setup looked in my garage

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My original problem came back.
Hi I had the problem that
Klove0972 had. When I used my iPhone to open or close the garage door, the green led light on the relay goes out and the wall button does not work until I physically touch the contact on the relay to turn the LED back on.
A few months ago I used the solution from btk to change it to Z-Wave Momentary Contact Switch

Log in to https://graph.api.smartthings.com
Click on "My Devices"
Click on your LFM-20's device name
Click "Edit"
Select "Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch" from the "Type" drop-down.
Click "Update"

I just verified that it is still set up as momentary contact switch but it is not acting that way. I have not used the app in a while and I’m wondering if some sort of update to hub broke this.
The 1st time it happened I thought it was a fluke but it happened again today.
Any suggestion would be appreciated, Thanks James

Hi Viks, did you ever get to the bottom of this? I need to close a circuit and need a solution for a UK ST?

Thanks

Paul

EDIT:
Looks this may hold the solution. Fibaro Relay:

I just swicth over to v2 hub and had to uninstall the relay and reinstall it to the new hub (which was a challenge but finally got it.) @strouja and @brumster I had this happen once with the old hub on once when installing the new hub. Basically the relay can become out of sync with the opener. I know that seems crazy because it should act a a momentary switch but it can happen. When it happened to me the wall button would stop working and the only way to open/close was the button on the relay or the app. It also can happen when you add the relay the first time to the hub. It depends on whether the add happens when the LED is on or off on the relay and the position of the door (up/down). I have been able to correct it twice by:

  1. disconnecting one of the blue trigger wires
  2. pushing the button on the relay to get LED on or off (i believe the LED should be on when door is closed and off when open… dont quote me on that but that is what i mean by out of sync. If something happend and LED is on when open it can interfere with the wall button and the remotes somehow)
  3. making sure the wall switch goes back to normal
  4. reconnecting the blue wire.

Hope that helps.

I’ve got my LFM-20 paired and setup as a momentary switch. Works as expected via the ST app and controls door great.

I’ve got a Multipurpose Sensor on the door to detect whether it is open or closed. This is also paired fine with ST and shows correctly in the app.

My question is, since the LFM-20 is ‘dumb’ and will open/close whenever it is switched ‘on’, how do I go about creating rules for this? I can’t just add it to a routine to ‘turn on this switch’ or it will open a closed door. It seems like I need to get the state of the multi sensor somehow. Any ideas?

Also, if anyone has successfully integrated their LFM-20 into HomeBridge I’d love to know how. A “Siri, open the garage door” won’t work and neither will ‘Siri, switch garage door on’.

Thanks!

I use the LFM-20 on my two garage doors along with two standard door open/close sensors that I put on the side of the door. I use the open/close status of this sensor to tell me what to do and to tell me if door is open or not. I also use a momentary button that is tied to a virtual switch so Alexa can be used to open and close my garage door. To make this all work I installed a custom SmartApp that ties the sensor to the LFM-20 and to the virtual switches. This has been described and discussed in great detail in other forum posts so I will not repeat that here. Bottom line is it can work great with a little effort.

So in a way the LMF-20 is dumb but not any dumber than say a door lock. The lock depends on an open/closed sensor to know the status of the door. Think of them as working as a team. The sensor can be used to relay state and the LMF-20 is a simple trigger. Only difference between it and a switch is it is not self aware of the position of the door like a light switch may be. At the same time a light switch can’t trigger itself either so i would only call it semi-smart or less dumb!

I think there are enough anecdotes involving LFM-20 and unexpected garage door opening, that seems unrelated to SmartThings own problems, that you should expect problems with this application.

I have never had a false open on my garage door with an LFM-20.

I have had more problems with the Remotec ZFM-80, but I am not sure if it is Smartthings fault, where the relay gets stuck in the “On” position instead of momentary on/off. This has happened at least twice. This prevents an open.

My experience is the same @professordave. I have not had a false fire to date over last year plus (at least not caused by LFM-20). I did an experiment with mobile presence triggering the garage door and it did cause a few false triggers but it was the cause not the relay. Had sames experience with ST presense senor too. Sometime ST looses connect with them and believe they left when they did not. I just stopped using it and have been very happy

@natescook1 yes the whole presence thing is a whole 'nother story!

I did not find presence sensing is reliable enough to base opening and closing the garage door automatically.

Except for this one rule I setup, but the rule itself is not that helpful.

I took the smart app “A Ridiculously Smart Garage”

And I hacked it in the following way, I commented out the line that actually opens the garage door but leaves in the code that will only close the door if it thinks it opened the door and an interior door is opened and then closed.

The garage door is only automatically closed if it thinks it opened the door, because I came home, and then I close the interior garage door to the house, which has an IRIS open closed sensor.

So, presence detects I am home, I manually open the garage door with my car remote, drive into garage, get out of car, open interior garage door, step into laundry room from garage and close interior door, that door closing then causes the garage door to close.

Not that useful as at this point I can close the garage door myself by just hitting the button.

I also have some garage door lights that turn off after ten minutes after the garage door is closed.

Just passing on a tip to all with this. After getting this to work for many many months it stopped working. I ensured that it was still set up as a Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch and I even tried re-applying that setting. via

* Log in to https://graph.api.smartthings.com
* Click on "My Devices"
* Click on your LFM-20's device name
* Click "Edit"
* Select "Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch" from the "Type" drop-down.
* Click "Update"

When I tried to use this feature it would turn off the little LED light on the evolve relay and the garage door would not work at all (even with the wall switch) unless I powered off the relay and powered it back on.

So this did not work for months. So last night via a browser I deleted and then did a force delete for this device.
https://graph.api.smartthings.com

Then I spent an hour or two trying to re-add this lfm-20 to my smarthings hub. I had no success, but then this morning it was there as a z-wave relay. (I tried the trick of hitting the small slitted button on the lmf-20 two times very fast while my app was looking for devices, that may have done it).
After the device was found in my app, I went to the browser and changed the type to Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch as described above.

Then and only then did this work again!!! I now can use the app on my iPhone and when I use it the status goes from on to off (after a second or two delay) and the garage door opens or closes.

So the trick was to delete it and re-add to the smartthings hub to get this working again

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My Liftmaster P3 Security+ 2.0 Garage Door doesn’t travel…

Here’s a different twist on this topic. I have my LFM-20 wired directly to the garage door opener unit for the power and wall switch connections. The LFM light comes on when the garage door opener is plugged in, and I had little trouble getting the ST app to see the Light Relay Switch and connect. I then edited the Device Type to be “Z-Wave Virtual Momentary Contact Switch” and when I touch the Switch button on the ST app, it momentarily switches ON then back OFF as promised. BUT - My garage door does not respond / move / try to close.

On the back of the garage door unit there are UP and DOWN buttons with lights that when depressed, cause the door to travel. When I touch the switch on the ST app, the garage door unit UP/DOWN lights flash correspondingly - but again, no actual garage door movement.

Thoughts?

Ok - let me close the loop on my own question. The new-er garage door openers have a second generation rolling code system. Mine, the Liftmaster P3 Security+ 2.0 had to have one of the actual garage door remotes (not the wired one on the wall) connected to the Evolve LFM-20 by soldering the LFM blue wires to the remote button. You may be able to discern the same points on the circuit board up in the garage door controller, but this was much easier to manage, sitting at my workbench instead of up on a ladder.
See this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vADl3FO0hGk

As far as adding the LFM-20 to the ST App, the most updated version of the app doesn’t list the LFM-20 under Evolve “+Things”… but just choose the Evolve LFM-15 single switch, and edit it as a Z-wave Virtual Momentary Switch, as explained here: LFM-20 Evolve for garage door

As far as the lights flashing on the back of the garage door unit; it turns out they were not indicating a ‘trigger’ to open/close, but were a flashing code indicating some fault. In my case, 1-UP and 3-Down, was indicating something wrong with the wall-mounted remote, where I originally had the LFM-20 blue wires connected…and it was basically saying, ‘no rolling-code connectivity.’

Now the LFM-20 works perfectly. I put it, the power plug wires, and the garage door remote circuit board all in a project box and mounted it to my garage wall, next to a power plug below my wired garage door switch. Works great with all SmartApps to auto open/close my garage door in whatever situation I want.

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Is it possible to have an ST motion sensor trigger the LFM-20 for a momentary closure when it’s edited as a z-wave virtual momentary switch?

When I trigger the Evolve set in VMS my wall oppener switch for a Lift Master premium 8355 2015 just shuts off (the green light goes off). But nothing happens (the garage door doesn’t move). After three seconds the Evolve LFM-20 goes back to off and the wall panel light goes green again. My smartThings Hub found the Evolve no problem. It is plug according to what it should be. I guess the new Lift Masters are protected or something. Did someone find a workaround for this issue.

Hi @duncan, I did exactly that with my relay and all it does is cut the power to my wall switch to open the garage door. The wall control light goes out for 2-3 second and then comes back as soon as the relay is off again. There is no action from the garage door in the mean time. I have a bran new lift master that maybe doesn’t communicate the same way as others. If you could help I would appreciate.

@dopey were you able to use your lift master with a z-wave relay eventually since I have the same problem. The relay clics and is open and close after 2 sec as it is set as a VMS. The only thing it does is shut my wall panel off but it never opens the garage door. What did you end up doing?