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.

Pictured:
Seeed ESP32 S3
2.4 GHZ external antenna
Blue Charm Beacon

I’m about 4 months into HA and have over 200 devices, 50 automations, and approximately 100 eye rolls when I show my gf the cool new thing I just did ha.

I have way more complicated automations than this one (this one is blinds down, fan on, ecobee changed to 70* and double click reverses it all). But knowing that Esp32 module I configured with a C1101 to make these Somfy blinds bend to my will (and the pain I experienced making it work) and the cool new inovelli blue fan switch I put in, just seeing it all work so smooth warms my heart.

Anyway, no one else I know appreciates it so here yall go.

SOLVED: I’m the idiot that caused this. I was flipping breakers when installing a new zooz switch and I hit these lights during that process. Good catch! I’m the dummy :)

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I have automations to turn them on at sunset and off at sunrise.

I see them turned off by automation at 6:17am and then turned on by ?? at 11:24am (not I said the admin). That 3:03pm one is me running the “off” automation to get them back off.

No one else has access so any ways to tell why they came on at 11:24?

ETA: just clicked the show more and it says “By State Change”

I saw somewhere on here that it was possible to jailbreak this device, put LineageOS on it and then run HA on top of it.

It was easier than I thought it would be (with a little robot help) and now I have a real time camera dashboard next to the bed to easily check security cams along with whatever other HA stuff I want to do.

It’s nice for us because one of the cams is setup for our elderly pup, so we can easily check on her at any time while in bed.

The device can do other things you would expect as well (clock, alarm, Bluetooth speaker, etc etc). Not bad for $50.

Please be nice, I’m not a plumber but I wanted to give installing a new smart toilet for my gf while she’s out of town as a surprise.

I have a small drip on the new valve. It’s PEX pipe that I used a cutter and sharkbite pushing thing and then tape. I left a couple of threads so it could bite but wrapped 3-4 wraps clockwise on the rest of the threads but the leak is still there.

It’s really hard to tighten because the push on thing spins on the PEX and it’s round, so nothing to put my wrench onto.

Before I keep trying random things does anyone have tips? More tape? Tighten it more somehow?

Appreciate the help

I’m installing a toilet today and need to shut the water off. I’m going to flip the breaker for my water heater and then turn one of these valves. Any idea which one it is?

EDIT - It was the one on the right. I closed that valve and the kitchen sink had no water after a minute.