Hello all. After a year of dithering, I've decided to take the plunge and try to set my Genie Model 2128 Garage Door opener up with a Zooz Zen17 to include in my hub. After a few other conversations on other threads, I feel pretty confident this SHOULD be fairly easily doable. I am anticipating doing this project this week, most likely on Friday.
Specifics:
I will be Using the Zooz Zen17 Universal Relay and a Zooz XS Tilt/shock sensor.
Based on those conversations, I do not have security, so I don't believe I need the Security 2.0 dry contact. I tested this by shunting the white and black blocks in the picture below. When I did so, the door opened
I would like to mount the relay close to the opener itself, either on the bracket or the ceiling above. This is the best location for power availability.
I would like to retain the use of the existing button and light control on that button.
The wires from the button are hidden behind the wall and ceiling. I really would prefer to not have to pull it all out and have a run of exposed wire.
Below are a few pictures of what I currently have and how it is wired. I can get more specific photos if needed.
One questions.
I would like to mark each of the sets of wires (both for this project, but also in case of future needs. How Do I determine which set of wires goes to what? I assume (based on the jumper test) the black and white block goes to the large door control button. But what about the rest?
The black and white colored terminals are where your wall switch wires (2) are connected - these are the same spots you'll connect the 2 wires coming from the Z17 relay (either directly or in series). The other two terminals (brown & orange) are where the safety eye-sensor wires connect (1 set of wires from each sensor) - don't touch those or add any new wires to those terminals - those sensors don't have anything to do with smartifying the GDO - just leave them be.
Yep, that's pretty much it! Well, in terms of wires anyway... Whether you leave the existing wall switch wires as-is (and just add in new wires from Z17 relay) or wire the wall switch to the Z17 switch inputs instead of the GDO (and then wire the relay itself to GDO) is up to you.
That is kinda what I was thinking. If I do it like this, do I still have use of the wall button to open or close the door, and the light control button on the wall button unit? if so that definitely seems much easier than I was anticipating.
Indeed - one benefit to leaving the wall-switch wiring as-is (and just adding in the new wires from the Z17 relay) is that all functionality of the wall switch remains unaffected.
To be honest, we (wife & I) very very rarely ever use the Zen17 to actually control the door -- we're creatures of habit, so we use the wall switch and regular car remotes 99.99% of the time.
For us (well, me - my wife couldn't care less lol), the big benefit of putting in the Z17 was to verify door status and for "emergency" open/close operation. I have various alerts set up to trigger for door open too long, door open when status changes to "Away" etc, etc, etc... Fortunately, none of those things has happened yet, but I like the peace of mind knowing I can easily close the door (and verify it's closed) remotely when necessary.
Dang, now I just feel like I'm talking to myself! Frankly, that is how I suspect it will be for us as well. I do have some conditions set up in the AladdinConnect app, but it's very structured and limited in what it will let you do, and I just don't like it. We rarely lose internet, so I'm not overly concerned about the app losing connection to the cloud, but in general, I'm starting to move towards more local control, or redundancy to local. At least if we do have an internet outage we will still be able to get in and out of the garage.
I tried to use modes recently. That was an unmitigated mess. I don't know if ill go back and try again or not. If I do, it will likely be something simple like just Home or away.
And that right there is one of the deciding factors for me.
Yep, we just use basic Home and Away for modes - nothing fancy. We use Life360 (free version) for Home/Away presence tracking -- we were using that long before i moved us to Hubitat, so I was happy that Hubitat had native integration for it. It's not perfect (occasional laggy updates), but it's good enough for us.
LOTS of various ways to do presence-sensing with Hubitat - search that topic in the community here and you'll be reading for days! Some folks have their garage door open and close based on more-precise presence tracking methods (approaching & departing), but that would be overkill for us. We live in the city, so I don't want our door opening/closing while I'm still multiple blocks away out-of-sight. For folks in tamer surburbia, they may be more nonchalant about the door being open.
ETA -- one example of cool things you can do with rules once everything is set up... For the native Life360 integration, there's a "Refresh" option that should force a Life360 status refresh... I added a refresh command when the door's position sensor changes and then another refresh 2 minutes later -- that way, we should get a good refresh both upon arrival and departure (2 minutes is usually enough to get us out of our Home "bubble"). Again, it's not always perfect, but that has helped quite a bit with status lags. It's the cool little things like that you can now do that make it neat & useful!
Yep, I have been working on that one for a while. It's only been recent that I think I have it dialed in. I'm using a combination of the mobile app (the weakest link in the equation), @bptworld 'sLife360 with states and tracker apps, and @Johnd7 's Improved Mobile Presence all aggregated with @dman2306 's Presence Monitor. That combination has been rock solid. Improved Mobile Presence has a way to tie in your lock codes (if you have that kind of lock) to mark you as present until your phone shows connected to your wifi. I started using that arrangement about two or three weeks ago, and it has been rock solid ever since. I still sorta monitor the various components to see which come and go quickest. Without a doubt, the mobile app is the one that isn't always reliable. it was really good for a while, but this latest update broke something again.
Nah we live in the far north suburbs of Fort Worth, in an almost rural town (population less than 5000) and I still wouldn't want my garage to open the far before I got home.
I grew tired of my family leaving garage door open and me hitting the garage remote as I go up the driveway which in turn closed the door vs open it. I have since purchased a Lutron Pico and the visor mount and use that button instead. In button controller I have it send an open command to the opener so if it’s open it remains but it will open if closed. Plus the Pico has longer range as I can press it I the middle of our culdesac. One good use of a relay on the opener.
UPDATE : Got this project finished. That was easy! The Zooz directions make it seem so much more involved and complicated. Thank you to all who helped and gave advice and suggestions!
Nice! Yeah, once you actually go through it and get it working, you definitely gain a clearer understanding of what-does-what so if you want to play around with tweaks to the setup later on, you have a confident foundation for it
About to do the same thing today with my ZEN17. How did you power the multirelay? If you used the included USB-C cable, what 1A power adapter did you use? Zooz instructions say not to use laptop/tablet chargers because they require a large battery on load to activate- are cell phone chargers include in that? If you used the +/- terminals on the side of the ZEN17, where did you run that power from?
I'd rather not use the USB-C power honestly, just because to me it's a less clean solution. I'd rather just have the GDO or wall switch or whatever supply power to the ZEN17.
What terminals on the ZEN17 did you wire to the b/w terminals on the GDO? I'm confused about if I need to use the S1/S2 stuff vs the R1/R2 stuff. Maybe do a write up of all your wiring?
For the Relay to GDO connection, I used R1C and R1NO per the Z17 user guide, but you could use relay 2 if you want - there's nothing special about relay 1.
I didn't wire my wall switch to the Z17, but you can if you want. I prefer to use wired dumb reed sensors to track door position, so I wired those into the sensor slots. Most folks prefer to use a zigbee/z-wave tilt sensor on the door for position - in that case, nothing** gets wired into the sensor slots (they're free to use for something else, as is the other relay).
ETA: ** -- if you wire your wall switch to the Z17, that will obviously take up a sensor slot
I used the power supply @hydro311 linked to. Turns out I have the same model opener as he does. All I did was mount the relay above the GDO ran a length of thermostat wires from the R1 shots down to the GDO, twisted them onto the power wires coming from the wall switch and plugged it into the opener. That way preserved the photo eyes, wall switch and (if wanted) the Aladdin Connect ability. Works flawlessly, all together only really took me maybe 20 minutes to do the whole thing. Easy peasy. Wish I hadn't gotten spooked and done it sooner.
EDIT: The one difference, I didn't use the wired sensors, I used a Zooz XS tilt/Shock sensor.
Very similar to @lcw731, I left the existing wall switch wiring intact - well, mostly... I ended up using two 3-port Wago lever-nuts right above the GDO to connect the wall switch wires, wires from Z17 and the GDO itself... For each of the 2 Wago "bundles" (1 white wire bundle / 1 colored wire bundle), I connected the corresponding wall switch wire, the wire from Z17 relay, and then ran a single new pigtail wire down to the respective input slot on the GDO.
Clay's method of just twisting the wall/z17 wires together and popping them into the corresponding slot on the GDO is really the very same thing -- my eyes are getting bad so doing nice & clean tiny wire twists is a hassle -- that's why I used the Wago pigtail method. Plus, if I ever need to remove the Z17, all I have to do it pop those 2 z17 wires out of their respective Wagos and poof, I'm right back to a fully operational dumb door.
For all the extra wiring, you can use bell wire or 18-2 thermostat wire. I myself prefer 18-2 stat wire because it's easy to get by the foot at any big box store or even your local hardware store, it's inexpensive, and it's slightly burlier than plain bell wire.
ETA -- if it'll be important to you (for whatever reason) to have wall-switch pushes done by the Z17 itself, then you'll want to wire the wall switch to it - then those will route thru the Z17 relay too. The way Clay and I did our wall switch wiring, most of our open/close actions are commanded the old/dumb way - regular wall switch or car remote. The ability to command open/close via the Z17 is more of a backup/emergency-use sort of thing for us.
