I’ve seen another thread like this, but I thought I’d create a new one as I think I’ve identified the conditions causing the problem.
Basically, since my Garadget lost its security key and I have had to reset it, I’ve noticed that my garage door has opened without me triggering it. This was puzzling at first, as it is quite difficult to see whether Garadget triggered the door to open (it has no logs), or it was somebody activating the remote.
After experimenting rather a lot I noticed this;
I interrupt the beam manually with my hand for a single flash, then remove my hand for a single flash (so the beam reflects off the reflector again), and … click … opens the door. The software has to register that the reflection % goes below the threshold for one flash, and it actually triggers it.
The problem for me is that my garage has a skylight, and the ambient light levels change with the weather and time of day. This often means that fine tuning the threshold is almost impossible as it varies so much throughout the day. This leads to situations where the Garadget thinks the door is opening for one cycle and will trigger the door to open as I described above.
This is a major security risk for me and I will have to disable Garadget until this bug is fixed.
I notice that, unless I misunderstand how it’s working, the ‘Sensor Reads’ parameter in the settings doesn’t seem to do anything at all. I assumed that if you set it to, for example, 5 sensor reads, it will have to perform 5 sensor reads before it takes any action - this is not working. It seems to do it every single sensor read regardless.
Starting from the sensor reads: The status is determined every scan cycle (1 second by default). The “sensor reads” setting changes how many times the reading is done in the same scan cycle. Multiple readings allow the resilience against the coincidental light intensity changes such as lightning or light being turned on at exactly the same time the reading is done. I’ll be phasing out this setting in future version of the app because there was never really a need for the user to change it from the default setting.
Reflection and false detection: Please first try to lower the threshold setting to 5% and see if that improves the situation with the false detection. If that doesn’t help, see if there’s a way to shield Garadget’s sensor from the direct light or change the angle of the beam so it’s not facing the source of ambient light.
Now the important part: Neither Garadget’s firmware nor its native client apps ever make the autonomous decision to operate the door. This, however is not the case with the third-party integrations. If in any circumstance you experience unexpected door operation, please de-authorize your IFTTT and any home automation integrations and review their respective logs to determine which one caused this.
Thanks very much for your quick and detailed response - I’ll try all of that out. I do have IFTTT integration enabled currently (nothing else), so I’ll de-authorise that and see if that fixes it. At the time of discovering this issue, IFTTT did not have any active rules running, and certainly nothing I’ve ever done opens the garage door, only closes it. Will be interested to see if this solves it.
I woken up to an open garage this morning. Checked alerts from garadget on my iphone and saw these :
Door is closed at 0518
Door is opening at 0521
Door is open at 0521
I checked IFTTT logs and it only has the pushbullet notifications for the same, no even was run for an open or close activity.
My question is thus - if IFTTT are to blame for the faulty open request, shouldn’t their logs alert to that affect ?
I have a notification when any recipe runs and I had none of these for the few things I have (which is only ‘open and close via google home’, ‘make sure closed at 10PM at night’).
In summary, can ifttt open the garage without any recipe being run or alert being sent ?
Yep - nothing else works with garadget I thought - or I dont have anything else ie alexa or anything. I reported a similar thing quite some time ago also.
If this is a reoccurring situation you can try disconnecting Garadget’s control wires for some time to see if that resolves the issue. Or we can just can swap out that particular unit just to be on the safe side.
Thanks Dennis for the replacement offer. It has only happened about 5 times since I have had it (twice in one day the last time included) - which is ages ago… as I am in Australia, it is a bit of pain for us to replace on both sides, so unless it seems to get worse, I will bear it for now. My next door neighbour was so impressed, they got one also and I set it up for them a long while back - no issues reported by them.
Mine is doing the same thing again. Had this problem in the past, but my son had an IFTTT app which we uninstalled. My son said last night it opened on it’s own, and now this morning it has been doing it multiple times, just opening and closing on it’s own. We only have the garadget app so don’t know what is going on, but very upset for a safety issue to have this happening. There are no logs from the app itself stating that it’s opening. Almost have to tell him to disconnect it since it’s a hazard.
Just had my son disconnect the device. I was now not able to get into the app, and when I finally did, it said it was offline for 38 hours, even though I used it when I left home 3 hours ago.
Gary,
Do you have notifications enabled?
When unwanted operation happens, do you confirm that the door is physically open or you judge by the status from the app?
My wife and son both saw it randomly open this morning. My wife said the door was open again this morning, she closed it, went to the bedroom, and came back out and it was open again. I have open notifications enabled.
Gary,
One of the scenarios happen when due to unrelated issue, the device generates a false “opening” notification and users sends the command to close the door. Because the door is actually closed at the time, the command opens it.
If it is not clear where commands are coming from, I’d suggest changing the password and re-connecting client apps one-at-a-time trying to detect which one issues the commands.
If you PM me the device ID of your Garadget, I’ll look at the info on the server to see if anything looks unusual.
One other thing. I was having the same problem a while ago and found it was happening because I didn’t close the app and I was inadvertently triggering the door to open when my phone was in my pocket. I force close the app after using it and that have avoided the problem.