IP or Telephone Garage Door Opener

[Brentdh187]

Hello all,

What a great forum. It's kept me quite busy reading thats for sure. I am looking for a way to open and close my garage doors with my Android phone. Either though an app, the internet or calling. My house is just about built and I ran 2 cat5e from my wiring closet to the opener location. I would also like to tell if the door is open or closed. I am not worried about any safety sensor because the door itself has it built in with the sensors by the opening. I have read quite a bit on this but most of it seemed a couple years old and would like fresh ideas. Thanks have a great day.

 

[Brentdh187]

Just started reading about Itach and total control. Seems like I could tie this together with that. Anyone use either?

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

If you 'just' want garage door control and open/close indication via your network, the web control relay is a quick $110 option.

http://www.controlbyweb.com/webrelay/

 

[gatchel]

Before you do anything with home automation, I'd suggest you spend a few weeks here watching and searching. There is a wealth of information here and suggesting a smaller, simpler device to do just garage monitoring and open /close may be a waste for you if you intend on doing other things. HA is addictive and you'll find yourself wanting more, (possibly). The web control relay that BSR mentioned is a good option if you want something now. I haven't used one specifically but I have read about them in detail.

I have an Elk M1 alarm/HA controller which does all of my controls. I was going to start with an Ademco Vista 20P years ago because it had X-10 and relay control. After reading I realized that I would quickly outgrow the Vista 20P and that the Elk M1 was the better long term option for me. More costly, of course, but I didn't have a used Alarm panel to get rid of, you follow me? (Thank you Cocoontech)

For door monitoring there are several options but the most common is a magnetic reed switch sensor such as a Sentrol 2505AL or a Sentrol 2315AL. Search them on google, there are plenty of pics and links.

 

[tmbrown97]

yeah, the itach should be a good solution; there's also ways to do it via z-wave or upb input/output modules.

As gatchel said though, if you want to do more, you may want to spend that money on a controller today and expand as you have the time/money/desire.

Garage doors are horribly simple - anything that can touch two wires together can open/close the door... so any sort of controlled relay would do the trick.

 

[rscott78]

Garage doors in the US are supposed 'illegal' to open using RF, which is why it's hard to find a pre-made product to handle it for you. There are solutions though as many have pointed out. I'm considering going this route personally:

Evolve LFM-20 - this is a z-wave relay which you can basically send an 'on' or 'off' command to. Wire it up in parallel to your existing opener switches.
Aeon Labs USB Controller - Pick up a controller for your PC; this allows your PC/phone to send commands to your LFM-20
Software - I'm using InControl ZWave Controller, but there are many out there that can handle it. To be fair, I wrote InControl, so I'm biased; I know that HomeSeer and z-wave command can handle it as well.

If you want to monitor if the door is open or closed, get yourself a door sensors, such as the Aeon Labs DSB04100 (also z-wave). I've seen installations where the user mounts the sensor to a 2x4 block above the rail of the garage door and has reported great success with this.

Good luck!

 

[apostolakisl]

For me the answer here is easy, provided this is really all you want to do. If you want to automate your whole house, I would suggest something much more grand.

A CAI Webcontrol unit. It is cheap ($35) and can handle all of your requests. Except that you will also need to buy some relays and alarm contacts for the garage door. Those will probably add another $40.

CAI is an ethernet connected IP device. You could locate the unit in your garage using your cat5 as ethernet, or, you could put the device in your wiring closet and use the cat5 as a signal wire.

The unit has 8 digital inputs which you would connect to standard garage door alarm contactors to tell if the door is closed. They simply report 1 when closed and 0 when open. You run one of cai's 5v outputs to the contactor and then the return wire connects to one of the inputs. When the door is closed, 5v gets sent to the input and the cai reports "1".

The unit has 8 digital outputs. You would need to buy a relay board and use the outputs to close a relay that you have wired to the garage door opener button. I would buy a bank of 8 relays. You won't need them all for this, but then you can hook up all 8 outputs and when you think of something else you want to hook up, it is all there and ready. They cost about $15 on ebay and you would need to be sure and get ones that work at TTL current.

The CAI can be logged into via http. There is also an iphone app that controls it. I do not know if there is an android app for it. You can bring up the webpage on your android. . no need for an app, although an app would be a little prettier.

CAI has built-in programming language as well so you can add some internal logic if you want.


EDIT: If you did at some point want to get more grand, the relay board and alarm contactors would still be part of the equation, you would just use something else to read the inputs and send the outputs (like an Elk m1)

 

[tmbrown97]

Garage doors in the US are supposed 'illegal' to open using RF, which is why it's hard to find a pre-made product to handle it for you.

Huh? The remote that came with the garage is RF; as is HomeLink or Car2U; What am I missing? Also, if you're into Insteon, they even make a package for status/control here. It's also pretty easy to copy that similar setup with UPB or ZWave.

Can you clarify?

 

[rscott78]

Huh? The remote that came with the garage is RF; as is HomeLink or Car2U; What am I missing? Also, if you're into Insteon, they even make a package for status/control here. It's also pretty easy to copy that similar setup with UPB or ZWave.

Can you clarify?

I'm not really able to clarify much more. I've only been told that it's illegal and a search with z-wave and illegal shows others saying it too:

http://forum.melloware.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=7911
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=91.5;wap2

I'm no authority and have no better info than what I've heard. I suspect that it has to do with the encryption on the RF/Wireless signal that determines if it's legal or not. Z-wave uses a pretty open protocol to communicate that can be easily spied upon and reproduced. Perhaps if someone came up with a secured method of controlling it then it would be golden? Again, only heresay, and most of this is likely related to selling a device commercially. Hooking up something by hand isn't going to get anyone in trouble.

 

[gatchel]

I think it's more of a safety issue than anything else. IMHO that's what the safety features of a modern garage door opener are for. If you are still using a GDO from yesteryear and it doesn't have the safety features on it, and you want to control it without visual verification, then shame on you. You should be arrested

 

[Brentdh187]

Has anyone used Irule with this Itach to open their garge door? Would Irule work if I wasn't in my local wifi network? Say my mother stopped by my house when no one was home and needed to get in. Could I log into Irule from my phone and open the garge door?

 

[apostolakisl]

Huh? The remote that came with the garage is RF; as is HomeLink or Car2U; What am I missing? Also, if you're into Insteon, they even make a package for status/control here. It's also pretty easy to copy that similar setup with UPB or ZWave.

Can you clarify?

I'm just speaking out of my ass here, but there is no way that rf is "illegal" for garage door openers. Just go to HD, Lowe's, Sear, etc. and you will find the shelves full of RF genies, chamberleins, and so on.

Perhaps they mean uncoded rf? All of the garage door openers now-days are rolling code.

 

[apostolakisl]

Has anyone used Irule with this Itach to open their garge door? Would Irule work if I wasn't in my local wifi network? Say my mother stopped by my house when no one was home and needed to get in. Could I log into Irule from my phone and open the garge door?

Do you mean itach as in IR? I don't know of any garage door openers that have IR as the way to signal them. If you mean Global Cache and the relays, then yes.

Either way, you need to do a port forward on your router to access you itach or other network device from outside your LAN.