Garage Door Monitor Options

A friend asked me how he could monitor his garage door when away. His house is older but he has Internet service.  
 
I thought about the Insteon solution (works for me) but that would require a PLM & ISY or Insteon Hub(?).  Don't think he'd be interested in that.  He knows how to build some solutions with a raspberry pie. 
 
Then I thought of an outside camera that looks at his door.... maybe the simplest and cheapest. Is there another solution?

Maybe one of these:
 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01C9QFX0Y

CAO Tags will give you position, temperature, humidty and Lux in one unit. Batteries are cheap CR2032. They run about $30 each plus one Tag Manager, plus a short piece of Velcro.
 
Tags have many, many ways to send remote parameters including Push notifications with vocals, kumoapps = javascript with permanent variables to carry over between scans, URL notices, IFTT, etc,, etc..
 
I use 7 units into my ISY994i HA box. They also notify me on my cell phone immediately for things like Fridge Door Open (lux, position sensing, and temperature in one unit)
 
CAO Tags require a Tag manager that send out signal on your LAN but cloud connection is required to keep things under control via cloud approvals.

If the person is in to hardware tinkering he could update the firmware on a Sonoff WiFi basic with Tasmota or mcsTasmota and utilize Mosquito. You can purchase a SonOff Wifi Basic under $10.

Google Sonoff basic Tasmota.

It's a bit of soldering of wires to the Sonoff basic (GPIO's and ground for basic functions - 3 wires) and cutting the Sonoff board so the relay is utilized for low voltage.

That done person could wire up two reed sensors to his garage for the garage door.  He could also connect the GDO to a remote push button using the modified Sonoff. Reed switches are cheap.
 
If he wants to control and monitor the garage door said person could install a mosquitto broker on the RPi and utilize some python software to monitor the garage door and send alerts.
 
Here is a picture of a hardware modified Sonoff basic that is used for sensing garage door open and close status (3 terminals), remote control of GDO and I added a temperature sensor to the wireless device. You can even add a small el cheapo arduino style PIR to the device if you want motion detection.
 

 
Here is what the Sonoff WiFi basic with a modified Tasmota firmware looks like.
 

 

 
Here utilizing Homeseer automation software (that will run on the RPi)  to monitor and utilize this device.
 

 
If the person is familiar with the RPi that person can install a Mosquitto broker and Node Red or any of the current crop of automation freeware out there in internetlandia to interact with the modified SonOff basic wifi device.
 
For cheapo visuals you can purchase a cheap wireless IP camera with a wide angle lens on it for less than $50 these days and just install it in the garage. Personally I do not utilize wireless cameras but for a quickie and cheap solution for your neighbor this would work.
 
 

Here is an OpenHab Sonoff Wifi Basic garage door opener tutorial.
 

Sonoff Garage Door Opener

You could even use a cheap alternative too. Like a SmartThings door sensor and the hub. Their door sensors are cheap, and he would just use the app.
 
This solution would be based on budget.

Here is a composite picture of GDO endeaver with modded Sonoff Wifi Basic.
 
Note here the current GDO stuff is hard wired to the Omni Pro 2 alarm panel zones (~ 150 - 200 feet) to the central wiring zone - all analog.
 
There are no failure points with the alarm wiring.
 
Using powerline, powerline hybrid or wireless introduces failure points and (X10, UPB, ZWave, Zigbee or WiFi) network (POE, Switch).
 
I do not depend on wireless X10, ZWave, Zigbee or Wifi for any hard security.  That is me.

The vehicles have small wireless RFID tags which ID the vehicle to the house. I don't utilize these tags though relative to the alarm panel.
 
It is much less wiring using Sonoff but the dependency is on wireless here. 
 
With this endeavor the SonOff WiFi device plugs in to the outlet above the GDO and is hard wired to sensors and GDO plus temperature sensor.
 
Signal strength from SonOff WiFi basic is around 60% to one test WAP centrally located on the second floor of the two story. 
There are more pieces relative to transport and to be dependant on.
 
Using triggers and events to post logs and text to speech I do not notice much of a difference between response times to the Sonoff versus the hard wired alarm zones triggers and events.
 
This is an el cheapo solution using a $5.00 modded SonOff WiFi basic module and a little DIY time.  ~ less than 2 hours to build and test.

Multiple functions of Sonoff:

1 - Door open sensor
2 - Door close sensor
3 - door trigger open close relay
4 - temperature sensor
5 - door to house or exit of garage door sensor *
6 - windows sensor *
7 - PIR sensor *

* adding use of more GPIOs and or looping the sensors.



The device / arduino is a sort of single purpose computer with it's own IP address. Here is a picture of a different firmware doing the same stuff on a SonOff. This firmware allows telnet and using a static IP and has custom pieces in it for a variety of open source automation.

There is no match (no X10, no Insteon, no UPB, no ZWave and no Zigbee) switch that does this. 
 
The current crop of WiFi of off the shelf switches do not do this.
 
If the WiFi switch utilizes an Arduino and exposes a JTAG pin out (Read, Write, Ground) then you can reprogram the wifi switch such that it functions like a little computer with it's own IP, web server et al.  You can hard wire the switch (3 wires) for communications and maybe even create a serial bus for it (primitive like an automobile or plane).

The new communications here is using Mosquitto.  I think though it would be easy to make this modular for added X10, Insteon, UPB, Zigbee and ZWave plus Mosquitto.

In a way Mosquitto is a bit like old xAP or xPL automation communications protocals.