Not sure if anyone has heard of Tailwind they are a fairly new company out of Canada that have made a very solid Garage Door controller add-on. One of the really cool features that if offers is auto-open and auto-close as you drive up or leave the house. iPhone users have to buy a vehicle sensor (which I had to) but I absolutely love it! You can also open/close the garage door from Alexa (opening requires a pin for security). The device uses Wifi and is also compatible with IFTT! Hoping that as this gains more popularity it can be integrated as a device in Hubitat as we all know IFTT is not the most reliable. Since I cant write code I just installed a contact sensor on the garage door and an IFTT applett to open/close via the dashboard. If anyone has any ideas to integrate please let me know!! https://gotailwind.com/
I too am a proud owner/user of the Tailwind garage door controller. The ability to set up automations such as: door opens>lights come on>smart door lock unlocks, etc.
Anyone out there able to get Tailwind and Hubitat communicating?
Wish I was smart enough....
Missed this one before. Probably because it said Garage Door and I don't have a garage. But I now realize that for those looking for presence sensor options, this is pretty cool and relatively inexpensive. Commented on @JDRoberts post about it on the other forum.
Just add a contact sensor with dry contact inputs instead of a garage door and trigger your presence automations based on the contact sensor closing.
This is still a Geo-Location based solution. It does not actually sense your bluetooth through that device. All it is doing is turning your GPS on your phone one when you're connected to your in-car bluetooth. That's all.
From a question answered by Tailwind on the Amazon listing:
Tailwind is the only solution on the market where you actually teach the system the exact GPS coordinates of your garage during setup. The system then uses the GPS on your mobile phone in the same way an automotive navigation app does. This allows the system to know your distance from your garage with fairly high accuracy and thus provides a much more consistent experience for the auto-open feature. You can set the distance anywhere from 50 feet to 750 feet in the mobile app, and it is generally accurate to within about 20 feet depending on your mobile phone’s GPS performance.
Also, it should be noted, that Tailwind is NOT local only. It is a cloud dependent device. From the Tailwind FAQ.
WHAT HAPPENS IF MY INTERNET GOES DOWN?
Adding Tailwind to your garage door opener does not disable any existing methods for opening / closing your garage door(s). If your internet goes down for a while it will temporarily disable your Tailwind device, but you will still be able to open and close your garage door(s) the old fashioned way.
So, what you've got here is a fancy app which uses the car's bluetooth to identify which car you are driving (which you could also do with many other apps) and turns your GPS on (which you could do by opening your maps app). For $50, you get that and a sonoff low voltage. A great gimmick, i'll give them that.
OK, fair enough but, for some that have issue with sleeping location services on their phones, this could help and the cost is relatively low.
You could also do the same thing by opening the maps app on your phone. And that doesn't cost you $50. Like I said, it's a great gimmick, I don't fault them for finding a group of people to sucker out of $50. It works but it's not doing anything new and revolutionary. Their advertising leads you to believe that they're scanning for the bluetooth in your car with the device in your garage. I investigated cause i didn't know how they were doing that for only $50. BLE is freaking expensive! I looked at using BLE beacons for presence a while ago. I've tried every presence solution out there. So, when I saw this I did some digging.
It does work...and if folks find it useful, great! I just think that people should know what they're buying, that's all.
How do you automate that?
There are many different ways to do that that are free. Tasker can do it. Personally, I connect my phone to Android Auto in my car which automatically brings up the map and turns on bluetooth.
Remember, you still have to turn bluetooth on and connect to your car with Tailwind. So, it's not fully automated either.
I always have bluetooth on personally. I'm under the impression that your phone would automatically connect to either the car (mine does) or connect to their bluetooth puck.
I'm an iOS user, so Tasker not an option unfortunately. But fortunately I have one of the new iPhones and don't have the sleep issue with Geolocation. So HomeKit presence is my first trigger, WiFi presence is my second, and a motion sensor is the third. When all three are active, my presence is triggered.
The app might also activate your bluetooth. That is also possible with other free apps as well. And i can't speak to iPhone as i own an Android.
I was using the HE app with Geolocation for a while but it started to give me trouble. I now use an Xbee powered off my car's electrical system. Best presence I've ever used. Never fails. And an Xbee mounted facing the driveway gives me incredible range. But it cost me $40 between the two. But it is phone independent. So, it doesn't matter what I move to in the future. And it's local...my ISP has really been falling down on the job recently.
Whether the cost is worth it is always relative. But keep in mind that these can control up to 3 doors per unit. I got mine for $50 plus an additional $30 for the second door kit (one is included). That's pretty cheap compared to other systems. The Go Control is $90 per door for example. The door sensors are hard-wired, so no battery reliance. Yes, I'd like to see it better integrated with my HE, but I'm hopeful that will come. The owner really seems to want it to be part of the larger home automation ecosystem. It's also cool that it knows what car you are in and controls the correct door for open/close (if you want). Their method may seem gimmicky, but I (and others here) can report that it works very reliably.
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