Integrate Garage Door Opener Safety Sensors

How can I integrate my garage door opener safety sensors with Hubitat?

I assume the sensors are part of a circuit that opens with the beam is broken?

Thanks!

Using RATGDO on a relatively recent Chamberlain/Lift Master garage door opener allows bringing in the door open safety sensor (obstruction sensor) to Hubitat, as well as many other components (motion sensor, light, etc.):

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Most likely, yes. Here’s what my Linear GDO wiring looks like.

Do you have control of the garage door already integrated into hubitat?

Yes, via a Lutron RR-VCRX.

Agree with @Sebastien that RATGDO is a great way to integrate the beam sensor. On top of this I recommend replacing the beam sensor that comes with your garage with the infinity shield:

Having two SUVs I have accidentally closed the garage door while the back hatch was open and the infinity shield solves that.

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Honestly I'm not sure it's necessary to integrate the beam sensors into Hubitat. Most times (that I know of) the sensors are connected directly to the motor. IMHO that would maintain direct safety... Again, IMO.

Integrating the beam sensor with HE enables me to:

  1. Turn on my garage overhead lights when someone passes through the beam when it’s dark outside.
  2. Turns on an indicator light and will remain red while the beam is blocked and turns green when not which helps my wife and I know we have pulled far enough into the garage.

FWIW the beam sensor or Infinity Shield in my case is directly connected to the garage door opener for safety reasons. RATGDO exposes the beam sensor status to HE.

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You must be new around here :laughing:. One of the (many things) I love about this community is the creativity of Hubitat user’s use cases and solutions. There’s always a reason to integrate X into Hubitat.

I have a rule that plays a warning siren when the garage door is going to close. Currently, I have to wait until the siren ends and break the safety sensor beam with my foot. I’d like the siren (rule) to stop as soon I break the sensor beam.

Did you actually get one of these? Does it work as advertised? Can you turn the beeper on and off, or how annoying is the beeper?

Yep my neighbor and I both bought 2 packs and split them with 2 other neighbors so 4 of us have them installed for about a month. We were all like why wasn’t this available years ago. One of my neighbors has a truck and has left the tailgate open when garage door was closed. I have a scratch in the back of my SUV from the door too.

Install took less than 10 minutes and basically runs using the existing sensor voltage and it snaps on the door track in 2 places. They have different size clips too for various doors and their horizontal braces.

Yes there is an on/off switch on one of the sensors. I personally keep mine off because I use a LED strip to let me know if I am in far enough. One of my neighbors keeps his on because he backs his car in and wants to hear it. It’s also fun to turn my other neighbors sound on to mess with him. :joy:

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I purchased a RATGDO. Which driver are you all using?

Please search the community as there are many threads on it. I am using this driver with mine.

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Ya, I did. There doesn’t appear to be a clear winner so I asked. Unfortunately, I was tired and didn’t ask the question I intended to, so I have edited my query above.

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I use this one:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bradsjm/hubitat-drivers/main/ESPHome/ESPHome-ratGDO.groovy

(Likely the same or extremely similar.)

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The one I mentioned is based on that driver but @ady624 made some additional improvements to it.

As you will see in the thread I mentioned, I edited it a bit further disabling the "position" attribute from mine. That is the value for percent the garage door is open and that is a very chatty update if your garage is opened and closed a lot. It is not something I really care about so again I just disabled that code in mine to reduce hub load processing the events.

@Busthead one thing to mention, I had heard that some sort of encryption was added to the RatGDOs at some point (after I purchased mine) and it might not work with this driver. Some are having to pair it with Home Assistant to remove it before it will work directly with HE. Again I don't have experience with that and I might be misunderstanding what I read here but something to be aware of. Curious if this driver works for you.

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Very cool. I looked at those, Cost nearly as much as the whole opener.

True but much cheaper than damage cause by door hitting something. Another example from several years ago: My mother in law didn’t pull all the way into her garage and door hit her bumper and the bottom panel of the door bowed out and was destroyed. That repair was much more than the infinity shield.

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