Garage Door Control App – VeraEdge

Ever get halfway down the block just to question if you’ve closed the garage door? It’s a frustrating moment deciding whether or not to turn around and check. With a little bit of hardware and this simple app, never be in doubt again.

The Vera platform consists of a small hub that can be bought for as little as $65 on Amazon and plays host to a wide variety of Z-Wave enabled devices. My favorite of these is the garage door controllers by Linear. The model is GD-00Z-4 and these can be had for only $85.

Peace of mind for an all in price of $150? Absolutely worth it.

The Setup

For each garage door you’ll need a Linear garage door controller, and you’ll need one VeraEdge gateway for the entire garage.

1. Mount the garage door to the ceiling about a foot behind the motor.

2. Connect the two pre-stripped wires to the same terminals that your opener button is connected to.

3. Plug in the controller to the same outlet that the motor is plugged into.

4. Mount the included tilt sensor with the arrow facing upward to the inside of the garage door, as high up as you can.

5. Plug in your VeraEdge to power and your router.

6. Create a Vera account and connect your VeraEdge to WiFi per their setup instructions.

7. Unplug your Vera and move it to your garage within a 20′ line of sight to your garage door controllers.

8. Go to “Devices” then hit the “+” to add new devices. Follow the pairing instructions that you are prompted with.

9. Open and close the doors manually with the garage door button.

10. Test functionality of the app, that it is indicating the right position (open/closed) and that you can use the app to open/close.

When using the app to open and close your garage door, the Linear garage door controllers will strobe and emit a loud beeping noise. This is to let bystanders know that the garage door is about to open or close and they should probably get out of the way.

For $150 and about an hour of setup, you can now check the status of your garage doors and even open/close them from your mobile devices.

Cautions:
The garage door controllers are intended to work with legacy garage door openers that operate by dry contact closure from the push button opener. If your push button opener has an LCD screen, this is a dead giveway that this will not work for you. Also know that this will not work with new Liftmaster motors that support MyQ.