Adding Garage Door Sensor
Adding a garage door sensor will be so cool.
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There are a couple solutions on the market. One solution:
http://www.chamberlain.com/smartphone-control-products/smartphone-connectivity/additional-sensor-for-myq-garage. Another:
https://garageio.com/ -
This weekend, I connected the HD-12 to my Garage Door opener using two 24VAC relays, a micro switch, and some wire. Now I am able to open and close the garage door using the Rainmachine App. Using IFTTT, and Location, you can also use Life360, I have triggers set up to automatically close the garage door when I drive away. I have another trigger set to open the garage door as I arrive home. I have another trigger that will close the door at 11 pm, just in case I forget to close it before going to bed. You could skip the IFTTT triggers using Location/Life 360 if you wanted, that is just something I did because I could. I, like everyone else, push the Homelink button or garage door remote in my car to close the door. But there have been times that I can't remember if I hit the button and I ended up driving back to check. I have a side load garage, so I have to drive in the driveway as I hit the garage door button and then wait for the door to open. Takes about 15 seconds, not long, but having the door open as I approach the house means it is already open when I drive up the driveway. That's 15 seconds back to me each time I arrive home.
Here is how it works. I have 9 zones for my irrigation. This leaves me three unused zones. I labeled Zone 10 - Open and Zone 12 - Close. I set both zones to operate for 1 second. When I select Zone 10 to run, it puts out 24VAC to the Open relay. The normally open connection closes and the two terminals on the switched side of the relay are connected to the garage door wall switch which causes the door to open. Now the door is open, I can run Zone 12 to close the door. I have a micro switch on one of the garage door rails that is used to sense if the door is open or closed and breaks the electrical circuit if the door is open and I run Zone 10 - Open which would cause the door to close. What do I mean, well, the garage door opener on the wall is just a single button. You press it and if the door is open it closes it. If it is closed, it opens it. It is dumb it doesn't know if the door is open or closed. The switch is a safety measure. For example, lets say someone arrives home and opens the door. I arrive home and the IFTTT triggers Zone 10 to open the door. Without the switch, the door would close, possibly closing on the person or car that just entered the door.
Finally, IFTTT zones can only be set to a minimum of 1 minutes. I needed only 1 second. With the help of Rainmachine Support, they pointed out that I could add two programs, one called Open, that operates Zone 10 - Open, and another called Closed, that operates Zone 12 - Closed. I set both to inactive so they wouldn't automatically start daily. Then using IFTTT I selected each Program to run when the respective trigger was activated.
Rainmachine has done a fantastic job integrating with IFTTT and this little project was only made possible by that support. Thank you Rainmachine.
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Hanonline - send me an e-mail and I'll send you photos and part numbers for this project.
email address - a3d76901@opayq.com
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