My interest in automating my garage door quickly lead me to the realization that using my good old fashioned remote is still WAY better. Until location reporting is improved (mainly more accurate and responsive to changes), or you can somehow add a sensor wire to your driveway/vehicle (like Invisible Fence for dogs), I don’t think it’s a reliable use case.
The “magic” began to fade the first time I had to sit and wait for my door to open 10…20…30 seconds FINALLY!! It faded again as I turned off of my street and saw that the door was still up, causing me to frantically check my phone until I saw it was closed minutes later. And the final straw was when I had arrived home with my girlfriend and, while we were waiting for it to open, she reached over and hit the button on my remote. My decision was made right then.
Great for checking if I left it open or closing it remotely. Not great for opening and closing by itself.
I’ve used presence sensors in my cars since very early on with a very high degree of reliability. There are a few things you can/need to do, as well as some things to be aware of though.
First, be aware that the presence sensors have very low powered Zigbee radios. The idea here is the lower power, the longer the battery life. But it does result in a few issues: Specifically acquiring and maintaining a connection to the Hub. To mitigate this it helps to have Zigbee repeaters strategically placed.
I have two SmartSense Motion sensors (v.1) that when plugged in act as a Zigbee repeater. One of these is in a window facing the street. The other is in my garage. With these two in place 90% of the time the garage is going up before I even make the driveway. Those times when I do make the driveway before it goes up, 99% of the time it’s going up before I’m to the garage. And as long as my garage sensor it operating (that is, the kids it’s knock it lose and make the power cord come out) I never gets the “wandering” presence sensors that come and go at random.
Now, you DO need to be aware that it does take a while, whether you’re using mobile presence or presence sensors, before the system will close your garage. Generally a few minutes. This is not ideal at all. And if you’re not comfortable with the door closing until after you are out of line of sight, then you shouldn’t use this.
Personally, I want to set this up as the remotes for our garage are beyond horrible. We have to be pretty much on top of the door for them to trigger, and they fall out of the holder and get lost in the seats. Rather than spend money on new remotes that may or may not have the same problems, integrating it into our HA (with or without the auto open/close option) seems more worth it at this point…
