Garage Door Closed On Wife's Car

I do want to add that this topic has the best click-bait title (and in this case I mean that in the best possible way) around here in a while...who is not going to want to hear what happened!?! :smiley:

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@csteele @danabw so just curious would you ever have a situation where you drive near the house enough to trigger the presence but are not actually coming home? I live in a suburban area and quite often we drive near the house (block away) and I get an alert someone is home, but we are not actually going home yet. This is using the HomeKit presence.

I'm a suburbanite and never drive near my home unless I'm actually going home, so wouldn't run into this issue.

The way I have mine programmed, it will sometimes think I left with the car if someone leaves/arrives after I left for my dog walk, and I will come back home to an open garage doorā€¦ So yea, it happens.

Same with the Aladdin Connect system. Flashes the lights for a few seconds before closing. Plus my obstruction sensors are in good working order.

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My presence stuff is a little bit of a mess, due to my wife not wanting anything done to her phone. She's OK w/car presence that doesn't require anything on her phone, so do I have presence sensors in the cars for the primary purpose of opening the garage door when we come home. No close automation due to safety concerns.

I've had zero false positives, as my rule requires both presence change to present & presence sensor on DC power, which only occurs when the car is on/running when I arrive home. When the car is off the sensor runs on a built-in battery. Very reliable (zero false positives), and one of my very, very few wife-delighting automations.

So I have "who" is present info for myself via Owntracks, "car presence" for both cars via @iharyadi's excellent presence sensor, and only a very vague idea as to where the heck my wife is. :wink:

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Twice.

If I drive around the block there's a chance at the furthest corner to detect I'm outside the outside ring. Usually doesn't detect there but has.

Said another way, as I drive away from home, I get a notification that my presence became Away. I get that 2.5 streets away so normally 'around the block' doesn't catch Outside. As I drive in towards home, I get the indication that presence Arrived about 3 houses away, and the door starts to move just as my tire hits the driveway.

Other than the 'round-the-block case, I've yet to get a false Open. But even then, I get notification too and then I just hit the dashboard and close it.

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That is interesting.

Similar. My wife doesn't mind things running on her phone, but she objects to me being able to get her location at will. So I have a multi-tier presence structure:

  • Each person has three presence sensors of different types:
    • Phone GPS (Hubitat app)
    • Wi-Fi presence (Unifi)
    • Car presence (Teslamate and @iharyadi's device, respectively)
  • Presence Combiner app says arrival of any causes our "overall" virtual presence sensor to arrive; departure of anything but Wi-Fi causes it to depart
  • Because I have some specific automations for myself, I also have an "Anyone But Me" virtual presence sensor to make it easy to act on whether I'm alone in the house.

The main thing that breaks with this is the rare occasion I drive my wife's car while she stays home. That's rare enough I haven't bothered to solve it yet.

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How can you even ask such a question? :wink:

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Heretic!!!

Angry Black Friday GIF by Buyout Footage

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:grinning:

Believe it or not, there are many things that are not worth automating. I know, I know, blasphemy.

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Episode 9 Grandpa Simpson GIF by The Simpsons

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I guess I've gotten really used to this since I let the task of automating the garage doors fall to our Tesla cars. The car does its own geofencing and uses the built in Homelink. I drive up and they open; I drive away and they close.

(really the opener is just a toggle. Thus, if my wife opens my door while I'm away, the car would just toggle it closed when I arrive - I have to press "skip open" on the touchscreen to avoid this rare case)

But this thread did make me go and check my door sensors; they are 4" off the ground and miss the bottom of the car. But that looks like the factory mounting position in the rails - they are new as of 12 years ago or so. I wonder if I should move them higher next summer.

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Note that the photosensors are required to sense a 6" tall object. It may be possible to wire in an additional set higher up, but I haven't tried it.

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I have my radius quite small (less than two blocks, just up to the main road), but we have driven through our circle before. In that case, mine will go up when we enter and right back down when we leave.

I've never seen a false arrival in all the years of using Hubitat or Smartthings. If there's a false "positive" it's usually not marking home or away when it changes, not mysteriously marking it the opposite of what it should be. GPS and WiFi won't mark me home unless I actually am.

I have had it not close when I left, but I also have a rule to notify me if the door has been open for 10 minutes and the house is in Away mode. In that case, I just hit close on the dashboard or MyQ app.

Correct and this came up in a friends home inspection report that the sensors were higher than 6ā€ off ground. If anyone does move them make sure you put them back before you sell.

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I'm ashamed to say that this happened to me the other day.
I came home, garage door opened on (SmartThings) presence, but had to leave shortly, so garage door still open. This was unusual.
While backing up, in closed car with radio on, hear crunch.
The rear spoiler on the MINI hit the bottom garage door panel.
Garage door was closing based on 5 minutes after presence arrival, as per RM rule.
Have sensors down low, but they weren't tripped yet.
Amazingly, MINI spoiler appears undamaged, save for a tiny bit of lost paint.
Bottom panel was bent and off track. Managed to fix.
Got off lucky.

Anyway, I think I'd like to change the rule to make it pause while there is still motion in the garage. I'm not too familiar with RM. If it was simple auto, I'd put in a restriction switch. What's the equivalent in RM though?

Well, I tried the RM convert SA thing on a couple of virtual switches and a real light.
I'll try to incorporate it in my 5 minute close after presence on rule.

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Did your safety sensors not stop the door or was the movement to quick?