A while back a mate asked me to connect his garage door to his phone. Seeing most garage doors have terminals on them to connect up a push button switch, it is pretty easy to connect up a smart device that can trigger the door, when we did this the only option in our region was using a Wemo Maker.
I found the Wemo instructions a bit vague (probably as there target market was not just garage doors) so I am sharing my config here. I also added the Wemo to Home Assistant so it could be displayed as a cover to both Siri and the Google Assistant. As you need to get the state of the sensor added to the cover the cover component the config of this took some hunting down so you can find this below too.
Hardware Setup
Door Motor
Most garage doors have a bunch of terminals on them for various options including a push button switch. The Guardian DCR2 we were dealing with had a push button terminal that when it is shorted to ground it opens or closes the door depending on the door’s current state. The idea here is you can connect a single push button on the wall to operate the door. When the Wemo is set up as momentary its relay acts just like a push button only controlled via your phone. Every model of door motor may be different so it is best to consult the install manual if you are unsure of how to connect your door.
Sensor Reed Switch
So you could just stop here and toggle your door via the Wemo App and it will open and close just fine, but you would have no idea if your door was open or closed if you are away from home which is not very secure. Fortunately the Wemo Maker has the option to connect a reed switch to the door. In our case we used this type of switch below that bolts to the concrete below the door. When the door is closed a magnet that is bolted to the door comes in close contact of the reed switch and triggers it, telling the Wemo Maker the door is closed. When the magnet moves away from the reed switch the Wemo assumes the door is open.
Wemo Maker App Settings
Once you connect up your Wemo to the app there is two settings you need to check for the Wemo maker and that is to set the switch type to momentary and to enable the senor as shown below.
If you got this far you should now be able to control your door via the Wemo app and know if it is opened or closed. The Wemo app can also send a push notification to tell you if the door has opened either by the Wemo itself or even if it was opened by the doors native remote control which is very handy.
The Wemo app
Home Assistant Settings
When the Wemo maker was launched none of Wemo products were compatible with Apple’s Homekit. It is only recently that Wemo has launched a Homekit bridge but unfortunately the Wemo maker is not compatible with the Wemo bridge. Fortunately there are a few other ways to get non Homekit devices exposed to Homekit so you can have full control of your door via apple’s native home app or Siri. My Favorite piece of home automation software is Home Assistant, it can run on a Raspberry Pi and expose you Wemo Maker to Homekit just like a Homekit supported device would.
To get the maker to appear correctly in Homekit or Google Assistant we need to set it up as a cover, doing this took me some time to find the correct settings so here is what the Wemo and cover sections of the Home Assistant configuration.yaml file looks like.
wemo:
covers:
- platform: template
covers:
front_garage:
value_template: '{{ states.switch.garage_door.attributes.sensor_state == "off" }}'
open_cover:
- condition: state
entity_id: sensor.garage_door_reed
state: 'on'
- service: switch.turn_on
entity_id: switch.garage_door
close_cover:
- condition: state
entity_id: sensor.garage_door_reed
state: 'off'
- service: switch.turn_on
entity_id: switch.garage_door
stop_cover:
- service: switch.turn_on
entity_id: switch.garage_door
friendly_name: 'Front Garage'
Wrap Up
This Wemo Maker install has been up and running for close to a year now and has not missed a beat. Although I am not a fan of the Wemo app, we like that you can control the door via the native Wemo app in case there is any funny business with Home Assistant. The Wemo Maker is no longer sold by Wemo and they even pulled the whole Wemo range from Australia which is rather annoying. While you may be able to pick up a used maker on ebay I would suggest shopping around as there seems to be new IOT devices released all the time that achieve similar functionality.
For further instructions on Home Assistant components mentioned in this post check out below.
https://www.home-assistant.io/components/google_assistant/
https://www.home-assistant.io/components/homekit/
https://www.home-assistant.io/components/wemo/
Also check out.
A Cheap Garage Door Reed Switch