Garage Door Automation reliability

[hunter69]

I have spent forever working on securely automating my garage door. I have a had random success but not reliable (waf) type success. I have tried everything I can think of and was wondering if I could get some help. SO let me tell you about the setup:

I have a DSC security system integrated with Homeseer. My driveway has a hardwired Bosch motion sensor. I have the ( Garage Door Security Alarm Switch Contact Sensor Industrial Honeywell DSC Ademco)

below listed to monitor my garage doors. To open the garage door I have a UPB contact closure. To accomplish this I am using Geofency and an ibeacon reporting status to PHlocation2 via myhomeseer. Here rae screen shots of the event in it current state:

[hunter69]

[hunter69]

My experience with this. Sometime it opens and sometimes it doesn't. I look at geofency and everything checks out. I look at the homeseer log but it does not have any information as to why the event was not triggered. I appreciate any help provided.

[Grundcm]

I did have some problems in the past with the group conditions so I generally do not use them any more.
I am not sure it will fix the problem, but I would probably move that group condition to the Garage open event.

[randy]

I agree with avoiding group conditions as a general rule. I found the biggest problem is that I never could predict whether driveway motion or home fence would occur first, so my event looks at it both ways. This event is very reliable.



I use an occupancy zone for the driveway motion. We have 2 narrowly focused motion sensors. They are also Bosch dual mode sensors. If either detects motion, the zone is occupied. If both have been no motion for a minute, the zone is vacant. Randy GF Home is my home geofence. Randy GF 435 iBeacon is the iBeacon in my car. They are both sent to HomeSeer through GeoFency and PKLocation2, using MyHS for transport.

The logic is:

If the driveway is occupied and if my home geofence is inside and if it is me in my car and if the door has been closed for at least 5 minutes and if I have been home less than 5 minutes, the door is opened.

The reason we look for the door to be closed for 5 minutes is to keep it from opening again if we are in the driveway warming up the car. The RandyHome timer is another fail safe to keep the door from opening prematurely. If I have been home for a while with the car in the driveway, I don’t want the door opening as I walk out to the car. By triggering on occupancy or on geofence, it doesn’t matter which occurs first. 90 percent of the time it is driveway occupancy that occurs last, but 10 percent of the time, the geofence reports later than the motion. For that 10 percent, we stop in the driveway for a few seconds and the door opens.

[hunter69]

Well I only recently tried the Group condition in order to fix my issue. I have one Bosch motion detector. Are you using virtual devices to determine the driveway is occupied? I am using the actual envisalink object to determine motion.

Thanks for responding

[randy]

Well I only recently tried the Group condition in order to fix my issue. I have one Bosch motion detector. Are you using virtual devices to determine the driveway is occupied? I am using the actual envisalink object to determine motion.

Thanks for responding

Yes, my driveway zone is a virtual device. By retaining occupancy for at least a minute, I am assured that driveway occupancy and home geofence overlap.

[hunter69]

Is it possible to post anything in regards to your virtual device and the event that sets it as occupied

[randy]

Is it possible to post anything in regards to your virtual device and the event that sets it as occupied

Sure. The Virtual Device is a simple on-off device that I changed to Occupied/Vacant. I use two events:

[hunter69]

Randy, would you share with me your setting under "options" in each of thos events. This morning i had issues with the setup again.

[randy]

Randy, would you share with me your setting under "options" in each of thos events. This morning i had issues with the setup again.

Sure. I just have both Events set to not be logged. The second Event has Cannot Re-Run for: set to 1 minute. I habitually use that on any Event that has a Trigger that can be repeatedly true. In this Event it is not so important since it is a Virtual Device that I am controlling and is also a Condition, but with a physical device, the Event could trigger once a second until the Device reports it has changed state. What were your issues?

[racerfern]

- Why do you have events not to be logged? Most events? I don't want to detract from the OP but I had to ask and didn't think it was worth a new topic.

[MStan]

Randy do you have links to the iBeacon and Bosch pir your using & photo of how you have it installed. I would like to set something like this up. Thanks! I was thinking of some sort of sonar unit mounted up at the opener to detect if the car was in the garage or not as well.

[randy]

- Why do you have events not to be logged? Most events? I don't want to detract from the OP but I had to ask and didn't think it was worth a new topic.

Just some Events are not logged. In this case everything is working fine. I haven’t had an issue with driveway occupancy at all and if I need to look at the history, the Virtual Device is stored in a Device History database for charting. I don’t need to see log entries unless there is a problem.

I also turn off logging on most Devices. Log entries are a good troubleshooting tool, but I try to keep the noise to a minimum. There have been rare instances where I have had to turn logging back on due to problems, just long enough to sort them out.

[randy]

Randy do you have links to the iBeacon and Bosch pir your using & photo of how you have it installed. I would like to set something like this up. Thanks! I was thinking of some sort of sonar unit mounted up at the opener to detect if the car was in the garage or not as well.

For iBeacons I purchased a handful of Twocanoes USB iBeacons from Amazon. Fortunately for me, I purchased 8 of them, unfortunately they are no longer available. There are many others out there, but I don’t know which are the best. I like the USB models, because I use accessory power in the vehicles to power them. They are only transmitting when the vehicle is on. I have one in each vehicle, including motorcycles.

For the motion sensors, they are not just PIR, they are microwave and PIR combination units. They are mounted at a fairly sharp downward angle just over each side of a double garage. Dual mode sensors are very immune to false reporting, but will always report a person, vehicle or large dog. Our driveway is fairly short and the angle prevents the sensors from “seeing” the street traffic or even people walking by in the sidewalk. If a person walks even 5 feet up the driveway the sensors pick them up. The model is ISC-BDL2-WP6G. They have a rated range of 6 meters. That limited range also helps me limit triggering to things actually proximate to the garage door. They make a Is SC-BDL2-WP12G if you want more range. I got them from Amazon. Here is the data sheet. They are not outdoor rated, but they have been fine tucked up under the eaves since 2015.