Smarting up my Garage

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As the next smart project I’m going to start, looking for garage smart home suggestions. Part of the reason is many more garage break-in’s happening in the area.

MN garage, not heated/cooled if that changes any suggestions. I’ll admit, I’m not comfortable yet with using physical smart home locks/door/garage door devices. I know many on here are ok with it. I do have a ring door alarm sensor on the one garage entry door, nothing on the window.

  1. recommended smart plugs that can handle turning off power overnight to my garage doors? Is amp/voltage requirements needed for that motor?

  2. My current dumb motion light switch turns off after 5 min when I’m working in that area not seen by that sensor. Planning to replace with a GE Enbrighten 26931 (motion/switch)

  3. additional recommended motion sensors, especially with the temp in the unheated garage? It’s a 3.5 car garage, with a work area in the back. Outlets are at a minimum in the garage (near garage door openers in the ceiling, a few others randomly scattered), which may be needed with cold temps.

  4. any other cool smart things to consider? Keep thinking attic fan, but doesn’t seem to be a big thing in my area.

Thanks!

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I can only provide some more general advice, but hopefully you might find something useful....

I'm with you on the locks, I'll probably do it eventually, but want to let things progress a little further....

In terms of devices, the same usual suspects apply to your garage example I expect, door (contact) sensors, motion sensors, smart plugs, etc. You may want to consider temp / humidity sensors if you haven't already, if only for interest's sake.

I suspect you could be right about impact of the load required for the garage door when it comes to the choice of a smart plug, but others are more experienced than me in that space. You may want to post the model you have so others can provide more targeted advice.

When choosing devices it may be worth considering the communications method, i.e. Zigbee / Z-Wave / Wi-Fi or even a combination of these or something completely different.... You may want to look at some repeaters or access points to help with comm's for your devices or even co-locate a HE hub.

I've seen people do some cool stuff with pressure sensors under floor mats to determine presence in a location and affect control of different devices in the area.

I'll tentatively mention the option of using voice control, only because people can have mixed experiences with these, including me, some with quite strong opinions :-), not so much me. I could see it may be useful to issue some commands via voice when working in the workshop area, if you are comfortable with using that as an option and it would be workable in the garage.

Along similar lines, don't think you need to make everything automated, you could still include some physical smart buttons / switches to override other smarts like motion lighting, so you know things will stay how you want them and there no reliable sensors to detect your presence or other activities.

Have fun!!
Simon

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Garage door openers:

  • Chamberlain lift master Professional (3/4 HP)
  • chamberlain lift master professional (formula 1) - sound like a car….
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Minneapolis guy here, so I understand the temp concerns! Is your garage detached or attached-but-not-conditioned-space (heat/cool)? 3.5 just sounded big for a detached, but certainly possible...

I have a detached 2-car (but just one garage door/opener).

I've had some smart stuff out there for a couple years since building it, so 2 full winters and summers worth of experience so far.

I can provide more details later (stupid day job!), but wanted to ask about detached-vs-attached, since that answer also helps address how finished the interior is too (lots or little drywall to consider WRT managing aesthetics and ease of running wires).

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I'd think a zooz zen15 would be ok for that. It is appliance rated.

Look at @iharyadi 's presence sensor. Also perhaps look at using a zooz zen16, Ecolink tilt sensor, and a smart 2.0 to dry contact unit. This would run in parallel with your existing garage door system.

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My Garage has the following setup;

  1. Aeotec door sensor in tilt mode -Bonus I get the temperature reading.
  2. Zooz MultiRelay for automating open/close. With this fantastic community app for combined sensor/opener device..
  3. I have a outlet that shuts off power to our garage door anytime we are geofenced out or in Sleep or Vacation mode. I have a Peanut which is working great, but has bad reviews here, so I'd look for something else that can handle your wattage.
  • @spartysh32 - this has helped me get past the fear of the smart/door/lock and automating it locally with the ZoozMultiRelay. As the only times they can be used is when power is connected to the door. Frankly the standard garage remote is a bigger liability now at this point, and we feel so much better about no-one being able to clone and open it while we are gone or asleep.
  1. Motion Sensor for the window in the garage
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Like I said above. zen 15. They're appliance rated and work well. Might be an option for you too

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MN native transplanted to FL.

My own garage automation is extremely simple, however I have a very sophisticated garage door opener/with external z-wave keypad / automation running at a remote residence detailed here: (The best wireless keypad? - #99 by demillerusn). Unfortunately the z-wave keypad I used is no longer available from Ali-baba last time I checked (about 6 months ago), but there may be other options out there.

In my own garage I simply have an AEOTEC z-wave extender to get the z-wave mesh out to my garage, which is running flawlessly with the latest z-wave firmware update. That, and a z-wave outlet plugged into a dual fluorescent light hanging above my workbench, with an Echo Dot.

"Alexa - turn on workbench." Works every time!!

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Personally, I don't think cutting power to your garage door is the right answer and will likely cause frustration should you need it during its powered off time. (Though I agree with the above about the Zen15 working for this)

I would suspect if a thief is going to break into your garage door it'll likely be by pulling the release and opening it manually, not by finding a way to operate the opener. In which case it won't matter if power has been cut to the opener or not.

For the security of the door, I would install something like this even though it isn't smart. (you might be able to make it smart)

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For me personally, I have a combination of Hue motion sensors and Iris V2 motion sensors in the garage. They both do very well, but the Hue takes AAA batteries which is a big plus. Lithium seem to hold up better in the cold, and you won’t have to replace them for 2 or 3 years. I have 4 total motion sensors, started with one, but don’t like waving my arms around when I’m working on something. I also setup a virtual switch to disable turning off the lights when I’m going to be out there for a while. I can activate it via Siri or Alexa.
I would really think twice about putting the garage door opener on a smart outlet. Outlets will eventually fail. Will that be okay?

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Attached 3.5 car garage, previous owner did a 1.5 car addition, 1 car plus the .5 is the additional workshop area. How they redid the roofline with the addition (shaking head), basically a roof on top of a roof when I go into the garage attic.

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Right on... So far, I've had zero issues with any smart gadgets out in my detached garage in terms of extreme temperature failures etc, so even though your attached space is unconditioned, you should still not get the full extremes a detached structure has to deal with. That's good news!

For any battery-powered smart stuff out in my garage, I buy only devices that can take AA or AAA batts, and then use a Lenink battery conversion kit (like this) to power it... They work freakin' awesome, and have a ultra-thin cable that's worked perfect with every device casing I've encountered so far.

I have those kits for my Hue indoor motion sensor out there, a Third Reality (3R) service-door contact sensor, and a 3R switch I use to control power to my bay lights (more on that later). Though it took some creative wire splicing, I even use one to power my Hue outdoor sensor for the back yard.

Powering all that means having outlets conveniently accessible, but since my detached garage is all unfinished (minus one drywalled wall required by code), it's easy for me to run new wires wherever I need them, and I don't have to be overly concerned about making sure it's all super pretty.

I have a Casete repeater in the garage to ensure coverage to a couple nearby Caseta outdoor plugs, and I have a couple power-monitoring smart plugs for a window fan and battery tender out there -- one Aeotec Smart Switch 7 and one Innr plug.

I use a Zen17 for GDO control, but I hard-wired 2 dumb reed sensors to it for door position instead of using a tilt sensor (to avoid batteries). That setup has been flawless -- no misfires at all since installing.

Up in the rafters and pointed at the house, I have an Aeotec RE7 and another Innr smart plug -- these are my main house-to-garage ZW and ZB repeaters respectively.

I have a non-integrated Wyze cam inside the garage by where most tools are -- it just loops its own SD card -- I'm not paying extra for any fancy detection/alert features. It was a cheap buy and I've been happy with its performance.

GD and service door contact sensors are set to alert if opened when no one's home, late at night etc , and same for the Hue indoor sensor (it would catch a window entry). That alert would prompt me to look at the Wyze cam, so that's all good enough for me.

My main swath of indoor lighting is wired to a Zen71 switch by the service door, but I have 3 separate shop lights (1 over each bay and 1 near my workbench) that are controlled by a dumb ceiling mounted motion sensor (RAB brand) centered in the garage. That setup gives plenty of hands-free light for basic comings-&-goings and quick trips out to grab something.

Up by the RAB sensor, I wired a dumb 3-way switch backwards so that I can power those 3 lights either thru the RAB (normal setting) or I can apply direct power to them for times when I need ALL lights on out there but am doing low-movement work that doesn't keep the RAB sensor triggered.

I mounted the 3R switch over that backward-wired 3-way dumb switch -- that way I can just double-tap the Zen71 switch's upper paddle to command the 3R to activate constant power to those shop lights when I need it. When I tap the lower paddle, it checks to see if the 3R switch is in the constant-power position, and if so, it flips it back to the normal RAB-controlled switch position for the 3 shop-lights.

It may not all be super pretty to look at, but you can have a MN-proof (no battery) smart garage! :slight_smile:

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It sounds like a good setup with the garage, but there are a couple things that I wouldn’t be okay with by going battery free:

  1. I recently replaced the batteries that came with my first Hue motion sensor that I bought 4 years ago. Granted, not every Hue sensor will sip that lightly depending on the configuration, temperature variations, etc.
  2. If there’s a power failure, there’s nothing online to alert you if there’s a break-in. It won’t matter for most people, since most people don’t have their internet connected devices on battery backups.
    In my case, I have enough UPS devices to keep the Hubs, router, modem, and a couple very strong repeaters running for around 5 hours if necessary, so I want battery powered sensors.
    This isn’t a criticism btw, just putting it out there as discussion.
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I would say, another nice feature would be to tell if the garage doors are closed at night from the bedroom. I believe the level sensors would work.

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Tilt sensor works great for that

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This device will only work with a certain LM opener. I have two of these openers which are wall mounted. There is no center bar at the ceiling as with 98% of the openers out there. If the thief does get in all he has to do is slide the bolt open on the 841LM and lift the door open.

Garage: I have have 2 hue motion sensors for light control and temperature monitoring. 1 Chamberlin battery back-up door operator connected to MyQ. I added a tilt sensor to tie door status into HE. There is one man door which has a Ring contact sensor on it and is connected to the Ring eco-system. The man door has a Z-wave Schlage lock connected to Ring eco-system. I use the Unofficial Ring App for HE to also control/monitor the door lock. There is 1 Ring camera to monitor the garage with motion/video.

Just to note, all this stuff keeps 99% of the honest people out. If a thief wants in your garage badly enough, there isn't much stopping them.

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Recommendations? Eco link?

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Ecolink is a great one.

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$9 could be one of the cheapest smart home devices I’ve purchased….