Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

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Use a remote while inside car to ring a bell in the garage? (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by 10zombiefingers@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum

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Complete noob here and maybe this isn't "home automation" so I apologize in advance.

I have a specific use case: I need to be able to alert anyone inside my garage that it's about to be opened, with time to get out of the way. I want someone driving up to be able to ring a sound inside the garage before opening the garage door from the car. (if it could be one action: hit the remote, bell rings, pause, then door opens, that would be ideal)

No amount of googling search terms has yet returned any useful results, unfortunately. I am open to using something like Alexa or Siri to make the sound/action if I could find the ringer needed.

My garage door opener is Chamberlain, but I don't have MyQ installed - I don't find that it has any ringer/bell function anyway. Maybe I just don't know the right lingo for this? Thanks for any ideas and guidance!

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[–] Z-Waver@alien.top 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The easiest and cheapest method is to blow the car's horn and wait a few seconds before opening the garage door.

The next easiest and cheapest option would be to use a wireless door bell and put the button in your car. It will only cost $10. But, it will require the driver to press the door bell first, wait for the desired time, and then press the garage door opener. Lots of opportunity for human error and not automated.

The over-engineered home automation method could utilize a LiftMaster Universal Garage Door receiver to receive the car's garage door opener button press.

But, instead of feeding the receiver's output to the garage door, you would feed it to a smart sensor, like a Z-Wave Door/window sensor to notify the home automation controller of the event.

The home automation controller can then run a scene that sounds the alarm in the garage, waits for a period of time, and then sends a garage door open command on a different channel, like a Z-Wave dry contact relay, or a ratgdo.

For the purpose of "emergency" access, in case the home automation system has failed, I'd also associate the second or third button on the garage door remote directly to the garage door. You won't have the alarm but you'll be able to open the door.

[–] 10zombiefingers@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

thanks, lots of options to consider and you're right about human error being involved in using 2 different remotes. I personally have the habit of launching the garage door while I'm several yards away, which might bypass solutions like movement detection in the driveway and remote doorbells, so I have to do some habit-changing. New dog = new rules!