$9 Garage Door Automation

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1

Hi all,

I have been lurking for several months now and have really appreciated the quality of this community so I thought I would share this little breakthrough I had today.

I was searching for a simple and CHEAP way to include the garage door in my system. Then the other day I ran across a little relay device on amazon for $9. I connected the old school wired push button wires to the normally open side of this relay, connected the power plug to a TP-Link HS105 (plug in module) that I already had laying around, and bam within 5 minutes had my door automated. Now of course Home Assistant doesn’t know the status of the door but that’s a project for another day.

Oh I did I also write a ‘watchdog’ automation to make sure that switch can’t stay on for more than 1 second (so the ‘button’ doesn’t stay pushed).

Hope someone can use this idea.

Take Care
-Dan

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2

You can detect the presence of the door with a tilt sensor https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=11987 but of course, it would be more than $9… ;

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You could also use …

and a Wemos D1 mini with a battery shield and stick it to the door, probably cost about ÂŁ5 or less :slight_smile:

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This sounds exactly like what I’m looking for. Dan, can you please give me more information about how you set up the relay and how reliable/secure it has been?

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Sorry it took so long to respond, been away. Anyway it’s pretty simple. You trigger a HS105 to turn on, it’s plugged into the little power relay (see Amazon link in my first post) and the relay ‘closes’ the switch contact on your garage (it creates a short between the two screw terminals your normal switch is connected to). Then I have a watchdog timer setup on HA to turn the HS105 back off (see below). It’s been rock solid since I installed it and it even works with google assistant so I can just say “hay google open the garage door” as I am driving up the street and like magic it opens. I also have the Monoprice tilt sensor so I can monitor the status and it’s also working great.

My ‘watchdog’ looks like this:
# Prevent ‘holding down’ the garage button

  • alias: “Watchdog Garage Door Button”
    initial_state: true
    trigger:
    • platform: state
      entity_id: switch.garage_door
      from: ‘off’
      to: ‘on’
      for:
      seconds: 3
      action:
    • service: switch.turn_off
      entity_id: switch.garage_door
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