Alternate Ultimate Garage Door Monitor

[apostolakisl]

I have had my doors monitored secure/not secure from the beginning. I later discovered that knowledge of door motion is important for programming logic. For example, if the door is in the process of opening, and the Elk is trying to close it, it would need to know that it has to "hit the button" twice. Once to stop it and once to make it go back down. Or if the door is already moving down the Elk would then need to know to just be patient and wait without taking any action. I had not run but one wire to each door so I initially thought this was not possible wihtout pulling wires. I discovered that Elk has a 4 state option:

1) short 0-3.9
2) Ready 4.0-7.3
3) Not Ready 7.4-11
4) Open 11.1-13.8

I designed a system to use all 4 states.

1) Not secure, closing
2) Ready
3) Not Secure (not moving)
4) Not Secure, opening

I openened my garage door opener (Chamberlin) and discovered that the motor is an AC motor that has slightly different voltages when opening vs closing. How this makes the motor go the oppoite direction, I don't know. However, I couldn't figure anyway to make the two different AC voltages tell the elk anything.

Solution:

1) Relay on the motor: I put a relay on the leads going to the motor. They are either 120v or 140v ac depending on open/close. The relay is designed for a wide ac voltage range and 120 or 140 close it safely. It is a triple pole double throw, but I only needed a single pole double throw for this. (I had the relay in my random stuff box, so I used it). The relay coil connects to the same leads that go to the motor so the relay closes only when the motor is running.

2) Door Switch: I needed a switch to differentiate between door moving up and door moving down. I used the pole that goes across the garage door and slipped a piece of wood over the part that sticks out. I drilled a hole (1 in) and then slit the piece of wood and put a spring across the top so it would stay nice and snug producing friction when the pole turns. I mounted a switch to that piece of wood at the end. I mounted another block on the rail at the top of the door track that acts as a stop and causes the switch to close when it pushes against it. When the door goes the other way, the piece of wood pulls away and the switch opens. So the switch is pushed close if the door last moved down, and the switch opens if the door last moved up. You could do it either way.

3) Wiring Resistors: I needed to have the door to read roughly 5 volts when closed and roughly 9 volts when open. To do this I used 3 2200ohm resistors. One resistor closes the pos/neg terminals on the door contactor, and the two others are in parallel on one lead of the contactor. You could use a 1000 ohm resistor instead if you had one, but I didn't.

4) Wiring the Pieces: The pos lead comes from elk to the common on the motor relay. The NC lead goes to one lead on the door contactor and the other lead goes to Elk common. So, when the door is not moving and the relay is in the closed position, it is the same electrically as it was before I did any of this work (except for the resistors). The NO lead from the motor relay goes to the switch mounted to the pole at the top of the door. The other lead from that switch goes back to common on elk. When the door is moving, the door contactor is electrically removed from the circuit and the switch at the top of the door is inserted into the circuit. So when the door is moving up, I get 13.8 volts (open circuit), and when the door is going down I get 0 v (short).



The switch itself is not visible becuase it is hidden behind the block and the "u" shaped guide I made to keep the gizmo from sliding off the pole.






EDIT: I found what I would call a bug in Elk's programming. In the first line of a rule, you can stipulate all 4 conditions on a zone (secure, not secure, not secure open, not secure short), but if it is a second line (after an "and"), it doesn't give you all 4 options.

 

[apostolakisl]

It seems as though 4-state zone wiring always gives tamper alerts unless you make it a silent zone. I may just have to write a rule that sounds the siren if the door alarms.

Is there a way to have 4-state zone that behaves like 3-state (type 1 eol resistor zone) except with all 4 states? In other words, no tamper alert at the keypads but still not a silent alarm zone?

 

[123]

I was planning to tackle this issue another way. Running additional wires is not a problem for me so I was thinking of using three zones:

1) Door fully-closed (magnetic contact switch located on the door sill; magnet located on door's upper edge)
2) Door fully-open (magnetic contact switch located at the end of the door-track; same magnet is used to trip the switch)
3) Current sensor (located on opener's AC line to detect motor activity)

I like your idea because it uses only one zone and my idea doesn't tell me which way the door is moving.

Thanks for the tip about the motor operating at different voltages when opening/closing. It got me thinking that I could probably use two current sensors, each set to trip at a different voltage, to report door status.

Door is stopped (all current sensors off)
Door is opening (first sensor on)
Door is closing (second sensor on)

All that remains is to wire them correctly in a single zone so that it makes senses to the Elk ... otherwise, I'm back to using multiple zones.

 

[apostolakisl]

I am sure it will depend on your garage motor. Mine has three wires, neutral and two hots. When it goes up, one hot is 120vac and the other is 140vac. On the way down it swaps.

With some electrical trickery you could probably reduce both by 120v so effectively one lead would be 20vac when opening and the other would be zero, then vice-versa allowing you to put two relays where one trips on the way up and the other on the way down, and neither when the door is still. I don't know how to do that electrical trickery.

The most you would need is 2 zones to do this. Use one zone just like normal (secure/not secure). The other zone to dectect motion up/down.

I am having troubles getting Elk to recognize 4 states. For some reason it is calling 8.8v "short", which it clearly is not. I may end up turning this into an analog zone and using rules to make it an alarmed zone.

At present I get 0v, 5.0v, 8.8v, and 13.8v with the four conditions (moving up, open not moving, secure, moving down). I can for sure work this using analog values but I would rather keep the zone a true security zone. I have an email into Elk on the subject.

 

[apostolakisl]

I altered my garage door setup now using my ISY Elk module. Elk didn't handle this on an alarm zone so I had to switch to analog and plus the Elk rules couldn't handle all the scnerios very well at all.

I switched the door contact back to a normal eol resistor zone that read 7.6 when secure and 13.8 when not secure.

When the door is moving, a relay which is piggy backed to the motor's power, flips over the alarm wiring and shunts it through the switch I pictured above. The NO/NC outputs have a resistor attached toe each, one is 12,000 and the other 6800 ohms. The result is

1) Secure 7.6
2) Not Secure Opening 10.7v
3) Not Secure Closing 11.9v
4) Not Secure Not moving 13.8v

Elk's voltage parameters recognizes situations 2, 3, and 4 as all being non-secure (which of course is accurate)

I programmed the ISY to handle the logic. When you push the keyfob or run the rule that executes automatic closure and arming the following happens.

ISY:
arms the system
checks the voltage
if open not moving, activates the door, checks the voltage to be certain door is going down, if going up, runs going up program below
if open going down, does nothing
if open going up, activates the door, waits one second, activates again
10 seconds later it checks the status of the door and emails me if not secure.

In total, this uses 5 relatively simple programs on the ISY