GDO Local Control - Rules to Live With

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I know there are a ton of post about garage door openers, local control, physical relays, rigged secure remotes - all of that. In this post I would like to focus on functionality of GDO apps/devices and automations that don't bring the door down when entering/exiting the garage.

For reference, my setup works (mostly) and has the following components:
Liftmaster GDO
Garadget Security+ 2.0 opener
Zooz Zen17 relay
Contact sensors for both open and closed position
SmartSense Multi Sensor v4
Zooz GDO app/virtual door control

So the real question I want to ask is HOW are other people automating arrival/departure using a virtual GDO. The "easy" answer is, if anyone arrives open the GDO. BUT, there are delays in processing and if two people arrive within a few seconds of each other the GDO gets told "open" more than once and because it takes (about 2) seconds from the relay turning on until the contact sensor flips to open. The second arrival/push of GDO causes the physical GDO to stop wherever it is. Yes, Zooz GDO will "report" failed to open - but still leave door in wrong position.

I have three RM rules related to arrival, Hello!, Garage Big Door - Open, and Garage Big Door - Close. I put the actual control of GDO into separate rules so they can be called from other rules without rewriting the same code.

On arrival the rule does the following:
Run Actions: Garage Big Door - Open
Cancel Delayed Actions
Run Actions: Garage Big Door - Close --> delayed 00:03:00 (cancelable)

I wrote it that way so if one person arrives and another arrives 2.5 minutes later the close routine doesn't trigger just as the second person pulls in (yeah, it has happened). Basically the 3 minute delay just resets on each arrival.

Screenshot 2023-11-18 at 1.07.55 PM

The rule uses the physical closed contact sensor as judge if door is closed. It then turns on a green lamp, blares an alarm and waits 10 seconds. I then run a second check of the physical contact sensor before pushing the open button on GDO. I added this second if statement to try to stop the failed openings - I have only tested it virtually thus far, but it seems promising.

Screenshot 2023-11-18 at 1.16.50 PM

The close rule does the opposite - again testing the closed sensor twice with a delay between. In addition to having door not open fully there have been instances where the close routine would try to close a second time - which triggers the physical to fully open. Hoping my new double-if routine solves this.

Before someone asks - yes, I have tried using the virtual GDO instead of the physical contact sensor and found the physical is more reliable about indicating the door is physically closed or not.

Happy to see what anyone else does or thinks about my routines.

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This isn't a helpful answer in terms of furthering your goals, but these kind of concerns are why I haven't automated my door actions to anything else (especially geofence-based arrivals/departures).

Main reason for that being that we're in a dense urban area, and there's no way I want my garage door opening, locks unlocking, etc etc sight unseen.

So 99.9% of the time, our GDO operation is done via wall switch or dumb car remote with garage in sight.

I do like having my GDO smart for easy security checks and emergency cases - family access while we're away, correcting an unsolicited open (knock on wood - that's never happened) and things like that. But for day-to-day operations, that's not how we operate the door.

But I hope others will chime in with better answers to help you meet these goals here!

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I don't really have this problem as my wife and I have separate GDOs. Use the Private Boolean technique to stop the rule from triggering until the door is open or closed, or for a set period of time.

Use a required expression on your rule :Private boolean true. Then set it false as soon as the rule triggers. Then after say 5 minutes, or via some expression that means it's safe to activate again, set it back True.

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I’m really surprised by the lack of conversation on this thread - I thought it would go crazy.

That said, I did add the private Boolean as part of my rule - and we still have issues when more than one person arrives “at the same time” (ala in the same car). The rule gets triggered and the door will start opening - then it will get triggered a second time and the door stops (second zen relay causes stop). It is very annoying!

I have also had multiple instances where the Zen17 stops responding. Appears the 2 second auto off on the relay fails - leaving the relay ‘on’ and then every ‘on’ command after that does nothing. I’m going to replace it with mhcozy zigbee 4 channel next week - maybe it will behave better.

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How is this rule being triggered? By another rule? There are no trigger events in the screenshot.

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I have a “Hello” rule that triggers this rule. Hello runs as expected. This rule DOES trigger and and runs (except actually opening the door correctly every time). And the Zooz GDO instance sends Pushover notification when open fails.

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My answer is, I am not and would not do this with something like a garage door. I have issues with security if the door were to open when I wasn't home, or staying open when it should be closed. I also have concerns about safety and property damage, like what if a car wasn't pulled in quite far enough or the door went down when a dog or other animal was in the path of the door.

People are free to make their own risk assessment, but to me this is one area I won't automate, even as attractive as it sounds.

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That is two people who would prefer to explain their personal objections to automated GDO functionality - totally not helpful.

Using automation to “push a button” when presence arrives is no different than a person in a car pushing the button. All the “safety” related functionality remains - eye beam prevents closing on an object or pet, I have both visual and audio warning before the close action is performed.

Back on topic - this is to discuss using “local” control of GDO (because MyQ is dead (and worked flawlessly)). If anyone has thoughts on solving the issue of the rule triggering the relay multiple times (thus stopping the opening process) - that would be helpful.

If anyone has any input on Zen17 vs MHCOZY (Zigbee) relays as used for GDO functionality - that would be helpful.

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You would need to post the log of the door triggering twice to be able to tell what is going on. From looking at the rule I don't see how it can double trigger, as it looks like it should not be able to send the relay command again for 30 seconds, but only the log would show what is going on.

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It could be helpful to others reading this thread who haven’t thought through the potential risks of automating their garage door opener.

It’s also possible that’s a widespread concern, and could explain why this thread didn’t blow up in the way you assumed it would.

I second @terminal3’s suggestion. If a rule isn’t doing what you intended it to do, sharing screenshots of the rule logs would be helpful.

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Has been working 90% well for last 2-3 weeks - have only had a couple times where rule triggered and either door did not open or we gave up waiting, pushed the button, then the rule stopped the door.

That said (and If it continues behaving badly I WILL capture/send some logs) here's my next issue. I have been using the Zen17 for a long time. It mostly works, but there have been a few times where it turned on (momentary close) but didn't turn back off. It is using its built-in GDO functionality - not an auto-close in HE. And there have been a couple times where it just got too hot in the garage and lost its zwave connection. I was hoping to replace the Zen17 with the MHCOZY 12v 4-ch device, but I am not seeing functionality withing HE for contact (though it does have 4x NO/NC connectors). Am I mssing something in HE?

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