Garage door automation with door position

Hardware
1

I have seen several solutions that work with HA for garage automation, but all of them test the open and close status, but don’t tell exactly in what position is the door. I have a sectional garage door, with a craftsman opener.

I am looking for any product / project ideas to allow tracking how open is the door (0 - 100% for instance)

Thanks

2

You’d use a tilt sensor. Search for that and you’ll find some discussions about this (I’ve seen this being discussed).

EDIT: Missed this:

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3

Thank you, I will research it.

4

I don’t see a tilt sensor working reliably.

The top segment will read as fully open as soon as it is around the bend an in the horizontal portion of the track.

A sensor per segment could give some rough estimate.

If it’s a Security 2.0+ opener (yellow learn button, excluding some jackshaft models) then ratgdo offers some percent open info/settings.

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5

Thanks Jerrm,

I was gettting intrigued as I found many zwave tilt sensors and I already have a zwave network, but I was coming to the same conclusion that I may be able to have a half reliable solution only putting a sensor in each segment, which seems overkill. The garage door system is an old one, so not the type you mentioned, but I may change it if I find the type of solution I am looking for.

More research to be done,

Thanks

6

I completely missed that this is a segmented roller door.

I’m not sure what your DIY and electronics skills are, but here are some suggestions if you’re keen to use ESPHome:

Perhaps you can mount an ultrasonic sensor on the bottom edge and have it look down to the ground/floor. I would combine this with two proximity/reed switches to also get a hard open and closed status. You’d need to pulse with the ultrasonic sensor then quite fast to get a continuous and acceptable measurement. My thinking is that you do this only when you know the door isn’t fully open or closed and otherwise don’t ping. Otherwise, you can drop the two reed sensors, but I’d recommend having these endstops.

Another option would be some rotary sensor attached to the main shaft on which the door is mounted. This is probably much simpler and more efficient.

(For completeness’ sake, I’ll mention the third option, but it will very likely be unreliable and finicky: A time-based solution.)

You might find more options if you look at roller shutter hardware. See for example Positioning calibration - FIBARO Manuals.

7

I’ve never cared much for the position of my garage door, personally I just use open/close and when I want to “vent” the garage during the summer I know to turn on the switch for X seconds and turn it off.

That being said, a couple of thoughts in addition to what’s been said that might be interesting projects (if not over engineered):

  • Reed switches for each door segment that feed into a multi I/O system to let you know how many reed switches are engaged/disengaged. It wouldn’t be perfect but it would be accurate per door segment
  • An ultrasonic beam located at the TOP of your door (this is what I would try first personally). This is similar in concept to those garage parking sensors that tell you when to stop based on the distance between your bumper and the sensor. If you had it on the top of the door and the other end in line with it (say attached to the door opener itself) then you could measure the distance from the opener to the top of the door, when closed it would be out of view because the top of the door would be pointing towards the ceiling instead of the back of the garage, but otherwise it should give you an indication as to how far away the door is from the opener and, thus, the reasonable percentage the door is at now
8

Thank you much for the suggestions. I like the rotary sensor idea and I will spend some time during the week end looking into it.

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9

Thank you for the suggestion. It sounds like the ultrasonic beam may work.