Open Sesame

Open Sesame
Photo by Tyler Nix / Unsplash

I've been wanting to have some way of controlling our garage door from my phone for a while.

Why?

Convenience

We bike everywhere and we need to get our bikes in and out of our garage. I don't want to carry a bulky opener fob so I have been parking the bike outside, unlocking the house front door and walking through to the (internal access) garage to press the button, opening the garage door.

Security

I've always wondered how hard those garage door opener fobs would be to hack. Our house has an internal access garage so maybe just pull out a radio frequency scanner and you have access to the whole house.

We have been known to leave our door open, generally due to backing the car up to load it up and not looking around before driving off. Once for four days away on holiday. Most recently for a whole day skiing.

Home Automation

I have been avoiding any home automation because I'm concerned the devices are likely to have poor quality software, be difficult to secure and, related to that, difficult to update when inevitable security holes are discovered or they become incompatible.

Anyway I purchased a $27 HomeKit Garage Door kit from Ali Express but it sat on my desk for months as I was paranoid about connecting it to the network.

Securing the Network

Then I came across this video which demonstrated how IoT (Internet of Things) and NoT (Network of Things; devices that don't need internet access) could be restricted in terms of their access to not just the local network but internet as well. This is the level of control I've wanted in my network for a long time, but garden variety routers don't seem to ever have it (or if they do it's very hard to use).

Eventually I figured out what Ubiquity Unifi set up I needed to be able to access and bought a Unifi Dream Router (UDR). Configuring this with all the firewall rules and three separate networks was the most complicated part and involved me replaying sections of youtube videos to get it right.

I set up a separate NoT SSID that only had access to NTP (most devices need to time synchronise) and the Apple TV (my HomeKit hub). It should not need access to anything else and on my network it wasn't getting anything else! I did make http access to it available so I could connect to it via a web browser as it runs a simple UI.

Configuring the Device

To set up the garage door device to the network took two steps (after turning it on):

  1. Connect to the device's wifi. The iPhone will automatically navigate to a web page served from the device (via the normal accept terms mechanism you often get on shared wifi networks). There you input the wifi SSID and password. I input those of the restricted NoT network I'd set up especially. Once this is done the page closes and the device is running.
  2. Pair with HomeKit. I needed to connect my phone to the same NoT WIFI network then go into the Home app and add it (under "other" as this garage opener device isn't HomeKit certified). This is the step where things often go wrong, e.g. if you were on a separate SSD (aka network) they might not be able to do the pairing, or if your network restrictions were too strict.

Installing the Hardware

The device came with a red and black wire that you connect to your garage door opener. So long as shorting a circuit toggles an open/close this will work, I expect most garage doors work this way. Ours does anyway.

It also comes with a long black cable with a magnetised sensor at one end, and a matching magnet. You put the matching magnet at the top of the moving door and the other above the doorway so they meet when it is closed. This is how the device senses if the door is open or closed.

The installed garage door opener

User Experience

The Apple integration is tight and pervasive as usual.

  1. I can see the garage door status and open/close from the Control Centre on my phone (swipe down). This even works on my ancient (Series 1) Apple Watch.
  2. I can query and open/close the door via Siri. This is the "open sesame" moment. My kids enjoy doing this!
  3. When leaving/arriving home it is detected and shows up on the CarPlay display.
  4. Notifications pop up when it is closed/open. This is a bit weird as I know comings and goings from home.
Pop up on CarPlay as you reach the street you live on

Automation

I soon realised the real value in IoT/NoT is when you set up automations.

We have two set up:

  1. When all of us (those with phones) leave the house, the garage will shut. There is some security thing on this so we get a phone prompt instead. I have had it pop up before getting off the driveway on my bike.
  2. Later in the evening if we've forgotten to shut it, it will shut automatically. No prompts for this for some reason.

Real life benefits

Is this the thin edge of the wedge into lots of home automation? I tend to think, like most people I guess, that a lot of these are more gimmicks and not worth the hassle to set them up.

But real benefits we've had from garage door:

  1. Weightless, bulk-less "key fob" always on hand (generally have phone on you).
  2. No need to go downstairs, to the back of the house and check the garage is shut every evening.
  3. No need to even bother with a house key, or let a friend in, etc, can just open the door remotely.
  4. More secure: I turned off the radio frequence feature and put away the old fobs.