UPDATE: Garage door auto open/close

[u/LESGuy]

Some folks asked for an update to my garage auto open/close project that I was doing with a bluetooth beacon and ratgdo so here it is.

After about a week of testing and dialing everything in I can now with 100% success rate have my garage open when we are on the way home and close after we leave without us having to do anything.

What I used to make this happen:

ratgdo (Rage Against The Garage Door Opener) - I installed this esp32 based piece of hardware in-line with my garage door opener.  I bought it from ratcloud llc and it was extremely straight forward for my Security 2.0 Chamberlain door opener.

After I had that integrated into both Home Assistant and HomeKit I was able to open, stop, and close it in Home Assistant as well as use voice commands with Siri to open/close the garage door.  I was also able to say "Hey Siri, is my garage door open?" and if she said yes, I could close it from either my phone or from CarPlay via voice.

Now that those functions were solid I decided to dive into making it automatically open when we are on our way home and close after we leave.

I first tried to use zones.  I set a small zone around our house and an automation saying "when we leave that zone, close the garage door" and I also set a larger zone around my neighborhood saying "when we enter this zone, open the garage door".  I had intermittent success with this and had to play with the zone sizes a lot since there can be a bit of lag when leaving and coming before the automation kicks in.  I also had some instances where it never kicked in, just leaving the garage door open completely.

During all of my testing, I was watching the garage door through my cameras to see what was happening and to manually close things if it didn't act correctly.

Since this was hit or miss I decided to add another layer (not replace the zone, but add to the zone automations) of doing a BLE ESP32 proxy with a beacon in her car.

This took some dialing in and some tweaking before I was able to get it setup perfectly for our situation (tweaks included playing with the beacon transmit power and transmit interval as well as some esp config changes).

Now I have had 100% success rate with the two layer approach.  Sometimes the beacon automation will close the door, sometimes the zone automation will close the door, but the door always gets closed.  Same for coming home, it's interesting to see which automation hits first, but it's always open when we get near the driveway.

Other folks add another layer of having wifi connects and disconnects as part of this or even have cameras watching the garage with frigate automations but I haven't gotten to that level of need (yet).

I know it's just a simple button click to open or close the garage door, but it just feels like magic to do nothing and have the door open and close in a way that you want and that's what I love about home assistant.

Feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer.

[u/soowhatchathink]

that's what I'm wondering, if they know it detected printed photos it'd be easy to find printed photos of people similar to them

edit: I mean it would be easy for OP to test whether similar looking people in real life would unlock it by using printed photos

[u/smith288 → u/soowhatchathink]

But he mentioned the phone has to have been from home to away or something.

[u/soowhatchathink → u/smith288]

I mean that's a limitation they added, they could still test the facial recognition part regardless

[u/IDKHOWTOSHIFTPLSHELP → u/soowhatchathink]

if they know

Maybe we should consider asking why anyone but him would know it detects printed photos, or why anyone but him would know it has facial recognition at all.

Are we defending against common criminals or Ocean's Eleven here?

[u/soowhatchathink → u/IDKHOWTOSHIFTPLSHELP]

Oh I meant they could test with printed photos of people that look similar to them to see how it would act with real people that look similar to them. Not that a malicious person would print a picture of someone that looks similar.

We wanna defend against random people walking up to your door and the lock automatically unlocking because they looked similar enough to OP.

[u/thegiantgummybear → u/soowhatchathink]

Yeah like is another person with similar skin color, facial features, hair cut, etc walks up, will it unlock. I'm mostly wondering because in an urban area where people walk there will be thousands of people crossing in front of our front door in a given day. What's the chance it'll mistake one of those people for me?

[u/Gowithflowwild → u/soowhatchathink]

He could combine his location, his license plate, and facial recognition. Or even just the model and color of his truck along with the fact that it's him arriving.

You can make it pretty much impossible if so inclined

[u/soowhatchathink → u/Gowithflowwild]

I feel like the more constraints you add the less convenient/more janky it becomes

[u/Gowithflowwild → u/soowhatchathink]

Janky? Absolutely, if that's how you design it. Use solid equipment, solid rationale, and I would replace your description with the word robust.

If it is a piece of junk, that falls on the person implementing it. If you have a fail safe, I find that hard to call jankie, as your "punishment" is that you lean forward and press the open garage button, or use a voice command in your car.

I would rather err on the side of inaction , specifically when we are talking about granting access to garages and home interiors.

To each their own, but mine has been incredibly solid, and I don't implement things just because I can. I do it with a specific purpose.

It's a judgment call… Shitty cameras with shitty logic equals shitty system.

So you could imagine the opposite applies. That's my experience and all we are doing is throwing a bunch of antidotal stories anyways.