We’re switching our dumb garage door to zwave. I was just curious how everyone finds it best to trigger the openning/closing of the garage door.
google voice request?
proximity of cell phone (and if so is this reliable/secure)?
anything else?
I press a button on the garage remote that is in my car to open and close the garage door. It always works and is is relatively secure.
I use automations to check the garage door sensors (open / closed) to verify the status of the doors. For example: at dusk, are the garage doors closed? When the last person leaves home (presence detection) are the doors closed?
TY @MaxK for the ideas.
Too frequently our garage buttons aren’t working so I think I’ll have to go with asking google to tell the garage doors to close or open. I really didn’t think I wanted to rely on presence detection - it just seems too iffy.
I use proximity sensors based on my phone location.
Security is in the eye of the beholder. If someone wants into my garage they will more than likely use brute force to get in rather than playing the latest James Bond super villain and hacking your phone or HA.
Hacking is not what you should be concerned about most. In Dutch there is a saying: “Opportunity makes the thief”. If a GPS signal drifting is misinterpreted as coming home and the garage door opens in front of a passer by, he or she may likely be tempted.
You could have an open / close button that is used from the HA Companion App.
@MaxK yes I will have a HA button but will probably set up a triggercmd api to a webhook automation so I can call it via google (voice) on my phone. I have a google pixel phone so easy interface that way. Also triggercmd calls work well with Alexa - I just don’t have an echo in my car.
I do like the idea of making sure the garage door is closed when we are away and after dark too.
They would have to be really tempted.
It’s not uncommon for someone to remotely open a garage door either from inside the house or from a car approaching.
So on the very rare chance that my GPS location drifts that much (FWIW, it has to be less than 1000ft from home, moving towards home and my phone needs to be connected to my vehicle bluetooth so it is kind of secure) they would have to notice it opening and then hang around for a while to see if no one comes out or the car doesn’t show up. Otherwise if they just immediately ran in they would normally have a very high likelihood of getting caught. It’s much more likely that they would notice if the door just stayed open for a very long time while they also just happened to be in the area the whole time.
most thieves aren’t expecting the door to open from someone not at least in the vicinity.
And also if my phone gps is drifting that much it would likely also trigger the auto close automation when it goes outside of that same 1000ft distance.
I guess what I’m saying is security is in the eye of the beholder.
wait, I already said that. 
This may be overly complicated and I haven’t used this or researched it but…
Could it be possible to use the Companion App (via your Pixel) and use HA’s native voice assistant (Piper, instead of Google) to open/close? And if your cars have Android Auto, you may be able to run the Companion App thru Android Auto and use the car microphone to give the voice commands.
Just a thought…
I use nfc tags to open/close the garage door instead of the remote. I dont keep the remote in the car.
I have the door set to close when I leave the home zone if I leave it open.
I dont open the garage too much anymore since my gym is in there. i have a mini split that cools/heats it and I just let it run all the time. If the door does open, home assistant saves the current state of the mini split and restores it when the door closes.
I have an NFC tag outside I can use to open the door if need be.
@MaxK I do have android auto but so far haven’t found it to be much use but then again I must admit I really haven’t spent any research time on it other than connect my phone HA to android auto. I just started to use HA this past July so there have been SO many things to learn. Before I started to use HA, I had been using triggercmd to interface with my old X10 devices so it was easy to keep using it with HA. I did start to set up Piper but never finish getting it working - too many other things that were more important. HA is really a black hole. The more you learn the more you want to automate. You should see my list of things I want to learn about HA. I have a google sheet in HA just to keep track of all of them. When I learn better, easier, ways to implement things I do trash the old and rework things. That’s what will probably happen with the way I’m using voice with Google and Alexa.
Thanks for the suggestions - I do appreciate them. I just don’t have enough hours to play around with HA as I would like to.
Seems like you thought out what the risks are of using GPS, and have mitigated those to where it is acceptable. That was my intent, not to say you should not do it altogether. Might be though that the insurance company, if they find out, may rule otherwise. But I’d expect the car to be insured either way, unless you unlock that with the garage door
1 Like
I started to do some research about how I could use android auto and my garage door opener and came upon this YouTube so I thought I would share it here.