Please pardon any confusion with my initial comment. I’d been running my GoControl garage door on the stock device handlers for a while now and had been using a SmartApp called “Garage Door Monitor” to send me a notification when the door was left open for more than X minutes.
The other day I finally purchased your device handlers and SmartApps and updated to your GoControl device handler. Now, when I open up that same “Garage Door Monitor” SmartApp, it shows as “no compatible device.”
I think that this is because the associated contact sensor, under the generic device handler, appeared as a separate device but it does not appear as a separate device with the custom RBoy handler. Does this seem accurate?
This leads me to the following questions:
Is it accurate that the contact sensor does not show as a separate device with the RBoy device handler?
If yes to 1, then how can I replicate the functionality I seek?
It does not appear that I can do this in the RBoy “Garage Door Open/Close Automatically” SmartApp. Could this functionality be added?
Ideally, what I’d like to be able to do is to “If Garage Door Open X Minutes Then Do Something” where something could be a notification, sms, or other action (turn on a light, for example.). Is there some other way to do this that I’m not yet seeing?
RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
31
I responded to your other note. I see what’s going on, the app you’re using doesn’t use a garage door controller. It’s a old app designed to work with something called a 3 axis sensor. Garage door controllers don’t use 3 axis sensors and they no longer supported the new smartthings capabilities. I had a look at the stock go control device handler and it doesnt support 3 axis so I’m guessing you have a different device which you’re using (you can PM me the device handler name from the IDE and I can check it out for you).
The contact sensor is an integrated device with the GoControl ZWave controller and it shows up a unique sensor which can be used with SmartApps or Automations. It complies with many SmartThings capabilities so it’ll work with any app which work with Door controls, Garage Door controls, Switches and Contact sensors (it’s very wide range).
That’s easy, this SmartApp will notify you and then also close the garage door for you after the set period. If you’re looking for just notification, then try this app: [RELEASE] Door Chimes and Notifications for Doorbells and Sensors
The issue you have is your devices doesn’t appear to be a contact sensor or garage door, it’s a 3 axis sensor. You can PM me your device details and I can look into it and see if there’s a better device handler for it to use.
I’ve added a feature request to trigger a third party action after a timed closure. Currently it has the ability to avoid closure if there’s motion or some people are around so as to not run some down if they’re working in the garage.
Awesome! Does the “Check for new version” switch actually do anything? I’m on v02.02.00 currently and wonder what’s the point of that setting if it does nothing either ON or Off. Thanks for the great work!
I see there is connection with MyQ, does that mean that this will support the MyQ Opener or will is support the MyQ Garage Hub too?
Thanks
Shawn
RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
37
It works with any garage door controller that complies with the SmartThings garage door capability. That includes MyQ if you’re using the MyQ Lite integration to connect it to SmartThings.
Quick Question, maybe i’m missing it. Is there a way to have one door open when one person arrives and a different door open when someone else arrives? I figure when my wife and I are in the car together both will open but we come home from work separate and it would be awesome if the right door opened.
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RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
41
Sure, just install the app twice and set it to open different garage doors for each presence. Tip: for closing garage doors when leaving you can select both your presence sensors in both instances so when either of you leave it’ll close all open garage doors.
What presence sensors are folks using to open and close their garage doors?
Is it possible to use a geofence based on your smartphone’s location to trigger opening and closing? My previous smart app supported this option.
Is it possible to use ifttt and a fingbox to trigger opening and closing?
I currently have a fingbox which uses an ifttt applet to detect when everyone’s smartphone leaves my WiFi network. There is a corresponding ifttt applet which detects when a user’s smartphone reconnects with my WiFi network. I use these triggers to set the mode to away or home on my ecobee thermostat. It seems to me the arrival applet could trigger opening the garage door if the smartapp worked with ifttt.
RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
45
The mobile presence is the easiest. There are also FOB presence with about 3-6 months battery life and they need to be within a 100 ft of the hub to work at best. You can create a Virtual Presence sensor from the IDE and then link that IFTTT and use it in the SmartApp to trigger a garage door.
I used my iphone as mobile presence with the Ridiculously Automated Garage Door app.
However, I had problems with the garage door opening by itself every week or two. Often enough that we stopped trusting the geofence used by mobile presence. I tried making the geofence bigger and smaller without any improvement.
I thought the problem might be a weak battery in the Linear GD00Z tilt sensor, but the problem continued even after replacing the tilt sensor battery.
Any ideas why garage door is opening randomly? I’m blaming geofence.
I used IFTTT with my fingbox to detect when my iphone connects to our wifi network and trigger smartthings to open garage door, but it takes a couple minutes for this to work. Too slow.
So I’m thinking about buying an rboy license. I’m hoping that the flexibility of adding external tilt sensor allows your app to detect false openings due to bad data from GD00Z tilt sensor.
And that if garage door does open erroneously, having presence detector inside garage will allow me to close garage within a few minutes if no activity in garage.
I assume you use geofence for iphone mobile presence location?
Can you recommend a reliable FOB presence device? That also sounds promising if geofence approach doesn’t work for me.
Thanks!
RBoy
(www.rboyapps.com - Making SmartThings Easy!)
47
Yes this is a common use, many folks use external sensors to trigger garage door actions/notifications as built in sensors sometimes have issue.
Yes presence sensors can be external FOB’s or the ST mobile app sensor. You may want to also check out this FAQ about mobile presence sensors.
SmartThings used to have a presence FOB, not if Aeotec is still selling them. Some folks like using Life 360. Maybe @JDRoberts can share this thoughts about presence sensors
The SmartThings Arrival Sensor Hasn’t been officially discontinued, but pretty much everybody is out of stock of them and Aeotec is not going to start manufacturing new ones, based on what they’ve already announced.
You can still sometimes find one at Best Buy, even for online shopping,
They do work with the current V3 app, but not the way they did with the classic app. When you want to use them in an if statement in an automation you have to look under “device status,“ they don’t show up under presence.
They have the same issues they always did, which is they work for some people and not others. The signal can get pretty easily drowned out by boosted Wi-Fi, even from a neighbor’s house, so it’s one of those “try and see how it works for you“ kind of options, which may be why they stopped making them.
I had one for a while which would work great during the day, but starting about 3:30 in the afternoon (perhaps not coincidentally when my neighbor’s teenage son got home) they would become very flaky. So I suspect Wi-Fi interference.
I now use ibeacons which work well for my needs, but they really work best if you have an iPhone, not android.
The Life360 integration was discontinued for the current V3 app, so you can’t set it up as a new user now.
JDRoberts
Thanks for your comments regarding presence fobs.
I’m looking for a reliable way to open my garage door when I arrive home from cycling.
Mobile presence via geofence worked well for a long time with my iphone XR, but over the past few months I’ve had multiple cases of the garage door opening while I was gone, before I got anywhere close to home. I had a small radius and thought the geofence might be detecting me leaving and re-entering the geofence. I tried increasing the radius but still had random openings. The problem does not seem to occur at night, only while I’m out cycling.
For a while, I had my son’s android phone opening the garage door using geofence, but had problems with false opening while his phone was at home at night. Couldn’t figure out why and removed him.
Now I’ve increased the geofence radius to 1km after reading rboys tutorial on how mobile presence works. I’m monitoring the garage door for false openings and hoping this works.
But if not, maybe I’ll try ibeacons. Any particular ibeacons you would recommend?
I don’t want to get too far off topic for this particular thread, so see the following thread. Even though it says UK, I think everything that’s there is also available in the US.
