Garage door opens at midnight

šŸ“ Rule MachineĀ®
2

I see that you have a garage door sensor and that you are checking it. You could always add another one and have it warn you if it sees a discrepancy between the twoā€¦

This wonā€™t change anything in the running of the rule, but you could also make some changes:

  1. Use a required expression instead of the IF condition (garage door sensor contact open)
  2. Remove the if conditions in your rule. All that will be left is the ā€œClose Garage Door Zoozā€ command.
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3

You should only need

IF Garage door contact open then
Close Garage door Zooz
End IF

Edit: Sebastiens solution is better as the rule won't trigger unless the door is open.

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4

One incident of opening the garage in the middle of the night is one too many. I would add another contact and check both before sending the command to close the garage.

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I guess this garage door doesn't have a specific 'Close' and the input just moves it to the opposite position?

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Right relays don't usually make the difference between open and close. It's the same command.

7

I would have written the logic a bit differently, but there are always a million ways to do things.

My suggestion is

  • Trigger: Garage Door Open (sensor)

  • Action: If garage door open AND time is 12 Midnight
    ** Close Garage Door

I probably would use Required Expression with a window of time between 11 PM and 1 AM or something like that.

I also would put in a second redundant closing event at say 12:15am.

1 Like
8

Yeah I think I prefer my shutter door with its tubular motor. I've had a few issues to get around:

1 - Accidental activation while away. I've now switched the 'up' live connection through a relay so that it cannot open while the alarm is set (when we're out or in bed)

2 - Siri mishearing the TV and opening it via voice. I've now got two virtual switches in Homekit instead of the door - 'Open' and 'Confirm'. A rule dictates that 'Confirm' has to be switched on within 5 seconds of 'Open' to raise the door.

That stops mine from misbehaving!

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But then it wouldn't do anything if the garage door had been opened all day.

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10

Your situation sounds different, but just because it is in the same theme of a garage door opening mysteriously, you might want to scan. The TL;DR version is that "something in the system" turned on the parent device on a ZEN16 spontaneously, and my assertion is that the parent device isn't used in any automation and there was no prerequisite activity before it turned on.

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11

Using the Zooz garage door app, all you need to do is send the Close command to the virtual device. No need to check sensors and whatnot, the app does it for you. If it thinks the door is already closed it wont do anything. I have a goodnight rule that I activate when I go to bed and it just has a simple close command on it, which usually does nothing. If the garage was open by chance it would close it.

So in your case, clearly the Zooz virtual door thought the door was open, so it sent the command to the relay to trigger (which will just activate the door no matter which position it is in). Possibly your sensor failed to work correctly the last time it has closed.

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12

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will play around with changing the rule. Still trying to figure out if the zooz relay or the garage door sensor lost connection with the hub. Both are Z-Wave.
It'll be a few days before I can work on it, but if you have any more suggestions, I'd appreciate any help. I dont want this to happen again. I was out of town when it happened.

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13

The only possible answer is that the door sensor didnā€™t register the correct state. The relay doesnā€™t know anything about the state, it merely triggers the circuit to activate the door opener, not knowing if itā€™s opening or closing it. You stated that the MyQ app showed the door was closed when the door sensor showed it was open, so you already have your smoking gun.
What door sensor are you using? Iā€™ve seen reports of sensors getting stuck that use a ball bearing and people replacing the ball with a mercury sensor.

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14

You should not need to do anything with the rule (except make it less complicated).
Here is my rule to make sure the door is closed when I go to bed. This is sending the Close command to a Virtual Door device created from the Zooz app (same as you).

Yes this is all you should need, it is that simple. The virtual door driver / app handles everything else as far as checking the sensors and making sure not to send a command if already closed.

image

I agree 100%

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15

The sensor is Ecolink garage door tilt sensor

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Ecolink has a couple tilt sensor versions - the older one is is the physical ball-bearing style (which can get stuck), and the newer version is solid-state.

If you have the old ball-bearing style, I'd suggest replacing it - either with the latest version of Ecolink or something like the Zooz ZSE43 (also solid-state).

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Those are the ones that get stuck. There is a newer more expensive Ecolink that is solid state and doesnā€™t have this issue.

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18

I have the TILT-ZWAVE2.5-ECO version

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Thats the one with the bearing, some people have had them get stuck. I have the same thing, never had an issue with mine.

If you can solider, you can also purchase mercury switches and swap out the bearing switch.

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20

Both of mine eventually stuck...

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Thanks for all the help. I think the problem was the sensor not registering that the garage door was closed, because of the ball-bearing getting stuck on my tilt sensor. I think I'll leave my rule as is and replace the garage door sensor with a solid state one.

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