Hi all, I am looking for ideas to solve a problem of mine.
Background:
I have two Genie garage door openers that I have installed on my AirBnB rental home. For various reasons the range on the regular openers do not work well - Guests have complained. Besides I am never comfortable allowing guests to use the openers. It is too easy to forget them in the rental car when you return.
The Genie openers are connected via wifi to the Aladdin system and that is in turn integrated with my Home Assistant system. It works flawlessly. I instruct home assistant to open or close a door and it does so without issue.
Question:
Given that most (if not all) guests have smartphones these days, is there a way for me to offer a method for them to use their smartphones to open and close the garage doors? All I need is for them to be able to send a signal to my HA to trigger the door to open or close. The requirements of a solution would be as such:
an easy and simple app to install on their phones (or perhaps a QR code?)
the ability to grant and remove access (I would remove access once they leave)
geographic restrictions - the trigger would only happen if they are close to the house. (this is more of a nice to have)
Anyhow, I think this should be doable. The key elements would be an EASY way for them to install something (that doesn’t require a lot of setup) and my ability to grant or remove access to that door trigger in HA
I am thinking of something like a QR code or an rfid tag… but I cannot visualize how it would work.
Weblink….that when navigated to uses HA AAPI to do action
App is ok but will always require user login or download and if service gets spotty it fails……weblink generally works slightly better with spotty service
Text message…pretty sure you can text to email and email can trigger HA action….you can also look into one of the services for text messaging like they do at restaurants
Webkink or text is my go to
You could put AP at entry and when connect to Wi-Fi the get access to HA. This is very technician and will fail hard cuz users will mess it up probably….that said…it’s a good way to give them access to local HA and would not require app(use web, look same as app). You’d need to add something that prevent previous user from entering if you did this like simple changing per guest user/pass (nothing complicated needed just not open)
EDIT
I have camera at gate that send pic and [open] button so I can open in notification. I think adding this would be good for you to minor the enter/leave so you can see user having difficult entry or unauthorized….this assume single rental and could get creepy depending on placement and location of entry.