I have a scene configured which closes my Garage 20 min after I opened it. This makes sure it is always closed in case I forget.
However, if I am working outside I would like to disable this scene. But I can’t think of a way to determine that I am outside the home and not inside.
Any ideas ?
I am not sure my approach to closing the garage is perfect either. Since I just say when the Garage Is Opened wait 20 min and close.
I was considering adding a dummy switch somehow that I could turn on to say don’t close garage. Perhaps just put a zwave switch on the garage light. But the fact that I use the open as the trigger for the close, once it is ignored the door will never close on it’s own.
I could change to a scheduled scene that checks if the garage is open and closes it but I don’t like that because it might fire 1 min after I open it and start closing when I don’t want it to.
I am using the GD00Z-4 Garage Door Controller which I am very happy with. It really works well and is very well designed.
If you used the garage light being on to inhibit the auto-close scene, you could then use the event of the light going off to close the door if it is open. This could be immediately or after a delay as you chose.
Quite honestly, i think this is a mistake in the first place. Lots of other posts and opinions in this forum on closing the garage door automatically… some good points on safety, etc. I’d much rather have the choice to close it.
To that end, the only solution i think is “near” perfect is to have Vera send you a text after 20 minutes that the door is still open. Then you can close it (assume you have your phone on you, right?) if you want to. For safety, i have a camera in the garage i can check first before closing. I also find this very useful to check in that my tilt sensors aren’t always right, and the door may actually be closed already.
I have cameras outside (using Blueiris software and VERA plugin) and they have motion sensors. Using motion sensors I accomplish this task along with auto locking the front door and a we other things.
If i go outside and cut the grass I don’t want these things to happen. So I use PLEG and the logic that if I just opened a front door and there there was motion keep the doors open and unlocked unless it sees no motion for 5 min.
Some good ideas that I will look into. Thanks. I like the idea of the light switch being turned off just closing the door that solves one of my issues with using the light switch. My only issue is I turn it on to keep the door open and then forget to turn it off. I think I can easily fix this with an auto off scene for the light. Which would then auto close the door and the light would now be off so the door scene would start working again. I kinda like this solution best.
The idea of a motion sensor from camera is a good one but my yard doesn’t have camera’s watching it just yet. I have been wanting to add a camera or two but I don’t think I could cover my whole yard effectively and so far I can’t get my camera’s inside my home to work correctly in UI7 especially motion sensing. I can’t use UI5 because the garage controller only works in UI7. So cameras are not a good option for me until they fix UI7 issues with the foscam plugin.
Regarding Safety I will have to look for the thread because in my opinion this device is safe. It has an alarm that goes off and a light that flashes when the door is about to be closed. This gives someone near the door the chance to move away. The safety path sensor should also prevent the door from closing if there is something in the way of the door.
I had originally thought I would just send an email but this device is so well designed that I didn’t feel the need to do it manually. Although I may always have my phone with me I may not always check it for a message from my door. At night I have my phone in “Do Not Disturb” mode so that would also prevent it from doing iits job depending on how late I come home. I really like the auto close feature and can’t think of any real safety issues that aren’t mitigated by the features of the garage and the door opener itself.
I just checked out the PLEG thread you provided and from my initial read it looks like yet another plugin that people are having issues with in UI7 so this is probably not a good option for me either. I hope they get around to fixing UI7 soon. It’s a mess.