Hi. I am using the Generic Z-Wave Garage Door Opener driver with my GoControl garage door opener (GDO) and I have a notification set to notify me when my garage door opens. Today I noticed that the notification appears to be triggered by the "Door" state vs. by the "Contact" state that are both reported on the device page.
The issue with this is that I am getting notified when a signal is sent to the GDO to open the door - even if the door never opens. (In this case, I have a hack set up using a keyfob and the battery was dead.)
I checked my notification routine to confirm that I am selecting the "Garage Door" that shows up as a contact sensor - shouldn't this map to the "Contact" state in the device handler so that it reflects the state of the garage door per the contact/level switch (and not the "Door" state that only indicates that a signal was sent to the GDO to open the door)?
Yeah, it’s a bit of a hack because the controller doesn’t work directly with my existing GDO wall controller. So I soldered the GoControl wires to a garage door key fob to activate it wirelessly. Works great until the battery dies and I forget there is a battery involved!
I have a general notification set up for various contact sensors, including this one.
With a dead battery in my FOB, the GoControl opener sent the signal to open the door but the door never opened because it never received the wireless command.
In that situation, the device page showed:
contact: closed
door: open
The actual door remained closed but my notification triggered to tell me that it had opened.
The door is going to trigger open because that's what it's doing, trying to open the door. The contact is going to show as closed because it is closed. Everything is correct. The problem is in the notifications app. Not in the driver. Try this from Rule Machine instead and see if the problem exists there.
So I created two rules - one based on the “Garage Door” device trigger and one based on the a “Contact” trigger (selecting my garage door and open for both).
Interestingly, when I remove the battery from the key fob and trigger the GoControl to open the door (so door open command is sent but not executed), I receive the notification based on the contact open but not the one based on garage door open.
For anyone else trying to create a more robust Garage Door open notification with the GoControl GDO controller, i recommend using Rules Machine and setting the event trigger based on the “Garage door” capability.
Getting back to the notifications app, I guess the tweak that would be needed is to expose the Garage Door “door” variable so that it can be used to trigger more reliable notifications based on the garage door state vs. whether an open command was sent.
