Garage Door Control

I installed a Honeywell overhead door sensor on my garage door and have been working out some rules for it. So far I can close it with a function key on the keypad and it will announce when the door is fully open or closed. The rules are an adaptation of the sample from Elk which did not seem to work properly. It needed a timer that starts with the button push to delay the announcement until the door is fully open or closed. Otherwise it will announce that the door is open as it is closing.
 
I also wrote some rules that close the garage door whenever the system is armed, so no more leaving the overhead door open all night.
 
The last thing I would like to add is a set of rules to announce when the door is open about a half hour after sundown and again every five minutes for the next half hour, and then close it. I can figure that part out, but what has me stumped is a way to interrupt the routine if I happen to be working on something in the garage after dark and would like to keep the door open. Any ideas?
 
Tom

Not following how the rule isn't announcing the status correctly. Once the zone changes state, then the system should announce appropriately, unless you provide a second contact to sense the open state, the rule and annunciation is open ended. That's either the issue or your conditional for the status of the door isn't written correctly based on faulted or secure. I don't see where a delay is needed in this case. Sounds like you're tracking the output and not the input state.
 
The last one would be best run through a counter based after the 2 conditions, after sundown and earlier than midnight, since the conditional overlaps the next day and the system will not know it's exact reference time. What you would probably be best served, assuming you don't run an occupancy detection routine, would be to turn an extend closing via f-key or task, then decrement via counters via rules and phantom outputs.

I have a similar application controlling my lighting when I want to work in the garage. If I just pop into the garage, turn lights on but not off when I leave, a timer will shut them off.  I also have a single overhead light with a simple motion switch.
 
That was annoying as H--- when I remained in the garage to work on a project, especially after dark.  So I created a program that runs with a double press (fast on).  The program disables the timer program until the switch is turned off (which enables the timer program).
 
So if you have lighting control in your garage, you could disable you announcing program until you turn you light off.
 
In the evening when a program attempts to arm the system (but the door was left open) I hear the announcement the door is open at that time. So I get up, close the door then arm the system manually.  But a programed button on my TV remote could do the same.
 
Hope this helps.

This is the Elk example:
 
WHENEVER F4 KEY ON ANY KEYPAD ACTIVATES
          THEN TURN Garage Door (Out 3) FOR 5 SECS
 
WHENEVER Garage Door (Out 3) STATE IS TURNED OFF
          THEN ANNOUNCE Garage Door (Zn 3)
 
It works fine when opening the door, but if the door is open and F4 is pushed to close it, Zn3 will read "open". I added a counter to make sure the door is fully closed before reading Zn3:
 
 
WHENEVER F4 KEY ON ANY KEYPAD ACTIVATES
          THEN TURN Garage Door (Out 3) FOR 5 SECS
 
WHENEVER Garage Door (Out 3) STATE TURNED OFF
           THEN SET GD Open/Cls (Counter 3) to 5
 
WHENEVER EVERY 3 SECONDS
           THEN SUBTRACT 1 FROM GD Open/Cls (Counter 3)
 
WHENEVER GD Open/Cls (Counter 3) CHANGES TO 0
           THEN ANNOUNCE Garage Door (Zn 15)
 
This waits 15 seconds for the door to open or close before announcing the position.
 
Regarding the auto close routine, it might be better to use when it's dark outside rather than sundown as the reference. And yes, a counter would work to extend the time, but then you would have to pay attention to it. Maybe a motion detector in the garage would be the way to go...
 
Sanders2222,
 
I don't have any lighting control yet, but I will keep your idea in mind for when I do.
 
Tom

TLGriff said:

 what has me stumped is a way to interrupt the routine if I happen to be working on something in the garage after dark and would like to keep the door open. Any ideas?
 
Tom

Click to expand...

 
Here are my rules to auto-arm my detached garage and keep re-armimg it if it is disarmed for all hours between sunset and sunrise. It checks every ten minutes and only arms if there has been no motion in the garage for 30 minutes. You can check more or less often but this works pretty well for me. The only problem I have had is when I disarm to get my car to run out for pizza and when I come back it has re-armed and I accidentally set it off.
 
 
DETECT 30 MINUTES OF INACTIVITY ON GARAGE MOTION 1

18 WHENEVER Garage Motion1 (Zn 165) BECOMES NOT SECURE
THEN SET Motion 1 (Counter 1) TO 30
 
19 WHENEVER EVERY 1 MINUTE
AND Motion 1 (Counter 1) IS GREATER THAN 0
THEN SUBTRACT 1 FROM Motion 1 (Counter 1)

DISABLE AUTO-ARM ANY TIME YOU DISARM SO THAT IT DOESN'T AUTO-ARM AS SOON AS YOU WALK INTO GARAGE
 
20 WHENEVER Garage (Area 2) ARM STATE BECOMES DISARMED
THEN SET Motion 1 (Counter 1) TO 30
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALARM GARAGE AUTOMATICALLY BETWEEN SUNSET AND MIDNIGHT AND NO MOTION FOR 30 MIN
 
21 WHENEVER EVERY 10 MINUTES
AND Garage (Area 2) ARM STATE = DISARMED
AND Motion 1 (Counter 1) IS EQUAL TO 0
AND THE TIME IS LATER THAN AT SUNSET
THEN ARM AREA(S) 2 TO AWAY IMMEDIATELY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALARM GARAGE AUTOMATICALLY BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND SUNRISE AND NO MOTION FOR 30 MIN
 
22 WHENEVER EVERY 10 MINUTES
AND Garage (Area 2) ARM STATE = DISARMED
AND Motion 1 (Counter 1) IS EQUAL TO 0
AND THE TIME IS EARLIER THAN AT SUNRISE
THEN ARM AREA(S) 2 TO AWAY IMMEDIATELY
 
Mike.

TLGriff said:

This is the Elk example:
 
WHENEVER F4 KEY ON ANY KEYPAD ACTIVATES
          THEN TURN Garage Door (Out 3) FOR 5 SECS
 
WHENEVER Garage Door (Out 3) STATE IS TURNED OFF
          THEN ANNOUNCE Garage Door (Zn 3)
 
It works fine when opening the door, but if the door is open and F4 is pushed to close it, Zn3 will read "open". I added a counter to make sure the door is fully closed before reading Zn3:
 
 
WHENEVER F4 KEY ON ANY KEYPAD ACTIVATES
          THEN TURN Garage Door (Out 3) FOR 5 SECS
 
WHENEVER Garage Door (Out 3) STATE TURNED OFF
           THEN SET GD Open/Cls (Counter 3) to 5
 
WHENEVER EVERY 3 SECONDS
           THEN SUBTRACT 1 FROM GD Open/Cls (Counter 3)
 
WHENEVER GD Open/Cls (Counter 3) CHANGES TO 0
           THEN ANNOUNCE Garage Door (Zn 15)
 
This waits 15 seconds for the door to open or close before announcing the position.
 
Regarding the auto close routine, it might be better to use when it's dark outside rather than sundown as the reference. And yes, a counter would work to extend the time, but then you would have to pay attention to it. Maybe a motion detector in the garage would be the way to go...
 
Sanders2222,
 
I don't have any lighting control yet, but I will keep your idea in mind for when I do.
 
Tom

Click to expand...

It looks like you're only looking at the conditional of the output/relay and not the actual status of the zone. The voice is only going to follow the output, not the status of the contact. You wouldn't want to track the output, but the status of the contact to determine open/closed since the output only toggles, not a binary on/off conditional. You need to write the rule to go off the secure and non-secure state of the zone, then speak accordingly. You'll probably have to create a few miscellaneous messages to represent your zone state based on the operands and not announce the zone descriptor itself.
 
Change the relay time.....you really want as momentary a trigger as possible. 5 seconds is a long time to hold a short on a pushbutton, maybe 3 tops.

I guess I didn't write my post very clearly. The first set of code is from Elk, which doesn't work. The second set shows the modifications I made to it and works fine. It is reading the garage door zone (Zn 15), but only after it is fully opened or closed. That was the problem with the Elk code. It read (Zn 15) before the door was fully closed. I have since shortened the pulse from 5 seconds to 2 seconds because as you mentioned, 5 seconds was way longer than necessary.
 
Thanks,
 
Tom

As Del said you are monitoring the output that toggles the door opener and has no bearing on the state of the door or direction of the door motion. How about if you use the Elk rules example but change the verbage to just say "garage door" instead of garage door open" or "garage door activated"?  That is really all that you can say for certain based on the Elk output.
 
Mike.

I am monitoring the relay output (Out 3) to tell when the door state changes (when the relay closes), but the message itself comes from the input (Zn 15). After 15 seconds, when the door is fully open or closed, it reads (Zn 15). If it's open, the message is "Garage overhead door is open" and if it's closed it is "Garage overhead door is closed". I'm using the [Say Closed/Open] option, so the use of "open" or "closed" is dependent on the state of the sensor on (Zn 15). We can't see the garage door from the house, so it's nice to hear whether it's open or closed, and as I said, that part works very well.
 
As for the automatic closure after dark, I ordered a 360º occupancy sensor to mount on the ceiling of the garage. If there is no motion in the garage for a period of time and it is dark outside, I'll have it make a couple of "Garage door open" announcements and then close the door.
 
Tom

TLGriff said:

I guess I didn't write my post very clearly. The first set of code is from Elk, which doesn't work. The second set shows the modifications I made to it and works fine. It is reading the garage door zone (Zn 15), but only after it is fully opened or closed. That was the problem with the Elk code. It read (Zn 15) before the door was fully closed. I have since shortened the pulse from 5 seconds to 2 seconds because as you mentioned, 5 seconds was way longer than necessary.
 
Thanks,
 
Tom

Click to expand...

 
 I think that elk may have turned the output on for five seconds to give the door time to shut before checking the zone state. It  checks the input door sensor state after the output returns to off (5 secs).  If you were to lengthen the output to a length of time to allow your door to close completely then the door state would announce correctly.

mikefamig said:

 I think that elk may have turned the output on for five seconds to give the door time to shut before checking the zone state. It  checks the input door sensor state after the output returns to off (5 secs).  If you were to lengthen the output to a length of time to allow your door to close completely then the door state would announce correctly.

Click to expand...

 
Yup, that's what I did. My door takes 14 seconds to close so I added a second for good measure and it works fine. They must have had a hot rod door if it closed in 5 seconds.
 
Tom

I just hope that your door opener doesn't have a problem with the switch closed for that long. It is designed to be closed  only momentarily

I suspect that what people are thinking here is that your rule could say the garage is open or closed as the zone goes open or closed, regardless of the button press - if you wanted it that way... but if you only want it to report status after you've triggered it from the button, then your way makes sense.
 
I like others use some similar code not for auto closure, but for the lights; the motion sensor to interrupt the default routine seems to be key.  However, it may still be worthwhile to make an announcement when the default routine is aborted - in case it's not you out in the garage!

Mike,
 
The switch is only closed for two seconds. I tried a one second delay, which I believe is the minimum and it was not totally reliable, so I bumped it up to two. The 15 second thing is just a delay for the announcement.
 
Work2Play,
 
Great user name.
I will be using this same announcement later for announcing that the door is open after dark, hence my reasoning for doing it this way. There is actually no way the zone could be violated without (Out 3) being triggered, unless someone manually disconnected the door from the opener, so the code should be solid.
 
Tom

TLGriff said:

Mike,
 
The switch is only closed for two seconds. I tried a one second delay, which I believe is the minimum and it was not totally reliable, so I bumped it up to two. The 15 second thing is just a delay for the announcement.

Click to expand...

 
My point is that if it is safe to turn the output on for 15 seconds without hurting the door opener then the timer would not be necessary at all.