Adding features to my garage door (GoControl) without going with relays

💬 Lounge
1

Hoping maybe one of you might have a cool idea of how I can solve this problem. I was thinking a custom driver might work, but now I think the UL restrictions are built into the hardware.

My goal is to have two abilities that the GoControl does not offer:

  1. Cracking open the garage door, and
  2. Opening the door from a cracked/vented position. (Means bypassing the one minute UL restriction.)

Here's what I've accomplished so far:

  • From a fully-open position, I can trigger a 'vent' operation. I use RM to send the close command to the GC, then as soon as the door starts moving, I toggle a power outlet that runs the actual Z-Wave GC module. This causes a TAMPER status, and UNKNOWN door status. I've got the timing just right so that from a fully-open position, the GC reboots quickly enough to pick up the GC door sensor change, which fixes the unknown/tamper situation.
  • Door closes. RM detects that my secondary contact sensor is closed, and then fires the GC to open the door. I kill the actual garage motor after 1 second, and I get a nice, consistent vent.

What I cannot figure out:

  • Modify the GC driver to somehow use my external contact sensor. I find the tilt sensor to be much less reliable. Since the door still reports CLOSED while in a vented position, this causes me quite a headache.
  • Starting from a vented position, close the door, then immediately open it fully. Like you would if you were sitting at the door button. Currently the GC is unaware the door is open at all in a vented state, so I have to 'open' it, which still works. I use RM, a virtual garage door, etc to manage this. The biggest hurdle is that stupid UL requirement on timing.

A few things I don't understand:

  • Are the UL requirements built into the driver, or in the hardware? If in the driver, can I bypass?
  • Would it do any good to build a custom driver that allowed me to manually-set the open/close status based on my external contact sensor, so it can respond to the proper open/close command.

I feel that I'm ultimately going to have to use a relay, but I wish I didn't.

2

Scratch that.. despite working several times with confidence, now the GC keeps going into an unknown state, so power-cycling it just doesn't seem to be a viable option.

3

Pretty sure is the hardware.

4

Thanks, yeah I think I've given up on this -- really only because I don't want to deal with tearing apart the existing unit to 'fix it,' (if it's even possible,) and I can't really justify buying other parts and tossing this in a box. I guess if I had a multi-door garage setup, I would put this one on the lesser-used one... but I only have a single door right now.

If I could figure out another use for the GC unit, I would immediately build out my own custom controller, likely using the ESP8266 or ESP32 units I already have laying around.