Garage door opening on its own

I was at a movie the other night and got a flood of “your door is opening” from the iPhone app. Checked the app and it said my garage door was open, so I closed it. I had no way of telling if it had actually been open…

This morning I got a flood of “your garage door is open” again so I checked my security camera and sure enough, the door was open!?

I’ve noticed if I’m in the garage with the door closed and put my hand over the reflective circle the door will open!? Is this normal behavior? I’m guessing that the unit occasionally doesn’t see the reflective strip, assumes the door is opening, tells me it’s opening and actually sends the command to open the door. Seems like it shouldn’t do this. It’s one thing for it to miss-report the door is open, it’s another to actually trigger the door to open when it can’t see the reflective strip.

The device itself and the native apps never make the autonomous decision to operate the door. Please check the integrations such as IFTTT or home automation that can automatically trigger the action when door status change is reported.

If I walk into my garage and put my hand over the reflective sticker on the back of my garage door it will open. Is this by design?

No, unless you have additional software configured, the door should only respond to your explicit command.
Do you have any integrations authorized (IFTTT, home automation hubs etc)?

Well, now I can’t recreate what was happening the other day??

I have a wink hub 2 but the only thing it has ever been configured for is a thermostat.

While the reflective strip/laser is nice, I’ve found its a little unreliable in my setup as the garage door opening/closing can cause sufficient shifting to give false readings. I went with a “belt and suspenders” setup and have secondary tilt sensors on my doors to verify the state. I also plan on adding a larger reflector, but like having a separate device that can watchdog the garadget opener.

If opener experience significant vibration or shifting, there is an option to mount Garadget to the wall/ceiling.
The laser sensor works well at with the wide range of angles.

I had the sensor on the opener itself but have since moved it to the Unistrut holding the unit in place. It is quite solid. The alert flooding occured after I had moved it. The laser pointer has been well within the diamter of the reflective circle. I haven’t experienced any ‘door open’ alert flooding for a few days now. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s an app thing and nothing to do with the physical door and its state. I’ll be keeping an eye on it…

The alerts always originate from the Garadget’s hardware based on the sensor readings. If you receive multiple false notifications again, please visit the settings page and take note of the reflection rate in relation to the threshold setting.

When the sensor is robust the reflection rate is typically 50-97 at the time the door is closed and 0-3 when it’s open. If reported reflection rate is near the threshold setting (typically 10-15) then sensor is probably reporting incorrectly and it needs to be adjusted. The possible reasons are misalignment (bad adhesion, or vibration), obstacles (release rope, insects) or ambient light (bright sunlight, opener’s lamp, etc).

The app is reporting 98%. This garage has no windows and no light leaking in. I have the sensor mounted off center on the Uni-strut supports and there is nothing hanging in the way. The sensor threshold is set to 15%.

That sound like a solid setup, you should be getting no false alerts with it. Please report if you do.

You’ll be the first to know. :slight_smile:

Unfortunately that’s not really an option in my setup. Our garage ceilings are much higher than normal due to the way the lot was graded, and the wall is on my wife’s side of the garage (3 car garage, 2 door opener), and her SUV allows for very little room. We pretty much have to go down the middle between the two cars. I do think a larger reflector would solve the problem as the garadget works fine so long as it hasn’t been diverted by the opener. I just haven’t been too fussed about it since I have the tilt sensors as well and those were already hooked into my Vera. :slight_smile:

Yes, the larger reflector will take care of the wobbly alignment.

I had noticed in the past that during the summer with the car parked in the double sided tape would loosen and the unit will drift causing a bunch of misreadings. I used some hot glue and glued the unit to the garage motor and the issues went away. Maybe this was the scenario. Never opened but reported as such.

Not reliable, it shows open when door is closed by car remote, laser stopped pointing and have to reboot to start working again. Misleading . Not QA well enough.

@sdayanand,
Thank you for your feedback.

Yes, the laser sensor will not provide the correct reading if laser is not correctly aligned. Any type of the sensor has to be properly setup in order to report the correct door position.

Please advice what part of the product description may be misleading and what additional QA steps you would suggest to help us improve your experience with the product.