I do a similar thing but with the coach lights on the garage. I often can't see the physical door status but I can see the lights. So I have RGB ZigBee bulbs that indicate the status of the door.
They turn RED when the garage door is open.
They turn GREEN for 30 seconds after the door closes. After this they turn to whatever state they should be in (daytime off, nighttime a color for the season/Holiday.)
With this I see the status of the door from my rearview and know that not only did I press the button but that it closed completely.
You could have a presence sensor (bluetooth or zigbee) in the car and automatically shut the door if it is out of range, and the door is open.
I'm looking for something I can stuff under the dash and forget about it. Not sure I could do that with Alexa. It seems like a bit of overkill for what I want to do.
Looks like the Shelly would work, but I would rather have a z-wave solution.
How well would the Shelly tolerate 99.9% of the time being either unpowered (while the car is not running) or powered but out of range (while the car is away from the house, but running)? Can it power up and connect to the network in five seconds or less when I start the car to back out of the driveway?
I have a Webcore piston that sends me a text message if my garage door is open when the geofence detects I've left and the location mode changes from home to away. When the door is opened, the piston sets the light over the sink in our kitchen to red and sends a message every 5 minutes until the garage door is closed. I've never used Rule Machine but I imagine you could use it to do something similar.
All great ideas, but I want something that doesn't require me to do anything when leaving the house other than open the garage door, start the car, back out, and close the garage door. That's why I like my previous solution (and want to implement something functionaly the same).
Think of it like a seatbelt chime. If someone is sitting in the seat, it chimes until you fasten the seatbelt. You don't have to notice a blinking light on the dashboard, or outdoor lights, or check your iPhone to see what the notification is about (or even have your iPhone in the car, but that's a different project).
The obvious downside to my solution is having to live with the buzzer sounding until the door closes, but I got used to it. My guess is that there are devices that could be used (instead of the buzzer) to do a voice announcement in the car, e.g., "the garage door is open". That's what I did inside the previous house with the Elk M1G to let me know when it was opening/closing.
I do like the other ideas as a secondary/alternate layer. My wife hates the buzzer, so I can't put one in her car. The suggestions would be good for her car since each garage spot has its own garage door.
This is exactly what my suggestion does - use a BTLE iBeacon in your car (along with a Hubitat-compatible BLE gateway in your garage), and close the door automatically as soon as the beacon is out of range using a Hubitat automation. You can tune the iBeacon's radio power, such that the distance (or range) is ~10 feet.
There are various ways to incorporate an iBeacon into Hubitat. But it is likely that a community developer will soon be providing a simple method that makes use of a Shelly 1Plus as the BLE gateway. Which is about as simple as it gets.
And doesn't require any janky hacks in your car.
This is the iBeacon that I am currently testing. It has a configurable transmit distance from 0.2 - 60 meters. I have the Shelly 1 Plus buried in a workbox in my garage.
There is also a zigbee way of doing the same thing, using either a SmartThings Presence sensor, or @iharyadi's Car Arrival sensor. However, Iman has recently taken a decision to temporarily limit production of his sensor - perhaps until when he redesigns the board to take into consideration the discharge characteristics of some LiPo batteries.
I recently picked up a Tailwind system for my garages. One unit can control 3 doors. Haven't connected it to Hubitat yet though, but not sure if I need to.
The obvious downside to my solution is having to live with the buzzer sounding until the door closes, but I got used to it. My guess is that there are devices that could be used (instead of the buzzer) to do a voice announcement in the car, e.g., "the garage door is open". That's what I did inside the previous house with the Elk M1G to let me know when it was opening/closing
Couldn't you send a voice announcement to your phone? The same as a regular Alexa announcement but just using your phone as the speaking device instead of an Echo.
I don't want anything that automatically closes the door when I leave.
I don't know if that is possible with an iPhone. Problem is that it requires me to have my iPhone with me in the car, which conflicts with my requirement that I don't have to do anything or have anything with me other than the key fob for my car. Even though I almost never it when I leave the house, there have been a few times. With my luck, those would be the times that I forget to close the garage door.
I used to have a bluetooth device that plugged into the cig lighter. When you started the car, it would try to connect to your mobile phone. If it couldn't connect, it would beep/flash. It was called "Bringrr". It didn't work very well, but don't remember why. No idea what happened to it. Looks like they went out of business.
See this
Then use the exact same setup to turn on an indicator light bulb or klaxon horn (or any other indicator of your choice) right outside your garage if your car is 5 feet away from the garage and the garage door remains open/up.
The hardware setup doesn't change. The trigger logic doesn't change. The mechanism of trigger doesn't change. All that changes is the action.
FYI - no longer produced/available.
I can certainly see why you liked the old system.
75yard range is amazing and provided plenty of time for the door to close.
I’m not sure any Z wave system will work reliably. IIRC z wave range is 100 feet. That doesn’t leave much time for the door to close before you’re out of range. Maybe start by testing range using any convenient device you have on hand. Comparing that to the time to close the door should scope out of itis possible.
If it turns out the range isn’t an issue you could try a zooz zen 16 with your buzzer on the 12v relay then use rule machine to turn on the buzzer when the door opens and off when it closes.
Please post back if it works. I might put something similar in place. Today I rely on CarPlay (the garage door is in HomeKit via homebridge). CarPlay displays a tile for the garage door when I’m within 0.25 mile of home. It shows open/close/opening/closing status. I glance at it to make sure it reads closed or closing when I’m down the block.
How about the ZEN17 instead of the ZEN16 due to its increased range? The manual says 200 feet. I can put a z-wave repeater in the garage to get a line-of-sight view when the door is open, but I wonder how far the signal can go when there is a steel garage door between the repeater and the ZEN17 under the car's dash?
To close this out...
I asked Zooz support if the ZEN17 would do what I want. Here's their reply...
...would not recommend the ZEN17 here. With the unit receiving power from the vehicle, it will only work if the car is running, which will create many reports regarding the "offline" device in the hub. Additionally, the car may block the Z-Wave signal entirely or severely impact the range, as metal is one of the most effective Z-Wave signal disruptors.
You noted the "warm-up" time; this is hub dependent, though each time it will be similar to registering a new device (loading data, sending and receiving commands, etc.) The device would be marked offline each time the car is powered down or out of range of the hub, and putting it back online may take up to several minutes.
Instead, our technicians recommend geofencing. This would not require you to do anything on your side; once the phone is around (the distance can be specified) a specific scene may be activated.
I was kinda surprised that it could take several minutes for the ZEN17 to come online after the car is started. Also, I'm not sure they completely understood what I'm trying to do and/or my requirements.
I may try the Shelly 1 Relay.
Yeah, dead device battery aside....I'm trying to think if the tilt sensor "door open / door closed" notification ever doesn't get to my phone before I'm 50 yards away.
One way to look at "requiring the phone" is that when you get 50 yards away and realize you didn't hear the notification....
Pavlovian tendencies cause you to START LOOKING FOR YOUR PHONE TO MAKE SURE YOU DIDN'T FORGET IT AT HOME 
I see dual benefit here.
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