GEOFENCE AUTOMATION

[KCJAG]

Could you write code to utilize simple geofencing to automate the garage door to close and open without any manual intervention? Since the iPhone can utilize proximity location services and geofencing it seems it would be simple to set a home geolocation either by hitting a "register home" button or typing in an address. Then your software could set up a geofence to that location; let’s say a 3 block radius. Now, you can program a button on the interface to setup a one-time out and one-time in code script to run.

Now, in the morning I open my mydooropener app and hit the (1 time out/ 1 time in) button and place the phone in my pocket. Later on I go to my garage and open the door with the wall remote. I jump on my motorcycle and back it out of the garage. As I head down the road my phone is sensing my geolocation and once I trip the geofence the phone signals my garage to close. After returning at the end of the day, my phone again sensing my geolocation sees that I trip the set geofence and sends the signal to my garage to open. I round the block and see my garage open and welcoming me home. I pull in and jump off my bike and close the garage as usual. The app then resets itself waiting for my next command.

I assume if your app could always sense the position of the garage door you could have an always on solution so when you leave the geofence it knows to close the door and when you return it would know to open the door. This would be a requirement since the user might leave the front door of the house to walk away or ride with someone else and if the app sent the automation signal once the left the geofence it would actually open the garage door leaving it open all day and then close it once they return but the user would not know their door was open all day since it would be closed by the time they see their house.

Full time automation would be great but a bit more technical in nature. 1 Time out/in would be easier to do and provide huge functionality to garage door automation. This would greatly benefit 2 wheeled modes of transportation but 4 wheeled modes of transportation would benefit as well. Without geofence automation, functionality is little more useful than my remote I have today other than I can open it from farther away but at the expense of having to fish my phone out of my pocket, unlock it, open an app, and initiate a program.

We would all rather fire up the app before leaving home, setting the automation sequence into motion, and heading out. You figure this one out and you will have a homerun on your hands..... It’s pretty simple code actually. You could even give the end user the choice of 3 or 4 different distances to set the geofence. Some people might want the door to just be opening as they pull into the garage?

[support]

Hi,

That feature is on our back log. It's been on there for a while but we haven't had that many people request for it. Personally, I'm
not too exstatic about it either since it does involve a major leap of faith ... You must really trust that this thing won't open up
your door when you're not around ...

WIth the new iBeacon using BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), maybe this will be safer ...
http://gigaom.com/2013/09/10/with-ibeacon-apple-is-going-to-dump-on-nfc-and-embrace-the-internet-of-things/

Any one else interested in this feature ?

If there's enough people voting for it, we'll try and get something included in a future release.

Best regards,

[rpuas]

This takes several assumptions... is your door closed and you want it opened as you enter geofence location?
what if another person at your home has already opened the door, and your entering geofence triggers the door to close.
defeats the purpose on top of the possible safety issues in inadvertently opening or closing the door.

I'm with support, does not sound practical.

The app provides more than enough convenience and feedback with the included notifications.

[redcaesar]

Another vote! This is what I was thinking with my request for open on wifi connect but way better!

[gtur]

I think iBeacon, or other "phone-based" technology that better ensures closer promixity, would be amazing. There is another alternative, and that ties the motorcycle/car itself to the garage. If the car had an iBeacon emitter or other BLE device or wifi transmitter that tries to pair with the controller when the car is on/started and in range, the established connection/pairing would open up the garage door automatically. As soon as the car moves out of range (30 feet?) or is shut off, the garage door closes.

I already "authenticate" to the car with use of the car key. So there is some security built in there. And as my phone gets older, I tend to lose battery power more often, and don't want to get locked out of the automated garage door if my phone battery is dead.

To a motorcycle rider with thick gloves on living in rainy Seattle, this feature would be a boon!

[support]

Hate to burst your bubble but if your iPhone's battery is dead, then the iBeacon won't be able to sense your proximity. The iBeacon
uses BLE technology (Bluetooth Low Energy) ... Low energy doesn't mean no energy at all ... Your iPhone needs to be turned ON
and Bluetooth as well.

In order for your scenario to work (dead phone battery), your car would need to have BLE and it would also need to run iOS with
the MyDoorOpener app installed. I don't think this will happen any time soon, unfortunately.

Best regards,

[tvillingett]

I think the idea with the ibeacon is great. You can (soon) buy these standalone quite cheaply, and they will be battery powered with a coin cell for 2 years, and before that it will emit bat low warning. This beacon could be seen as NFC, but with better range.
In the app you should then configure which beacon ID to be listening for, and then use the info for closing if open. You can also set the range for the trigger action in three steps: Immediate, Near, Far.
When returning home the same beacon (at the mailboxes for example) could trigger the phone to give message if you want to open the door, swipe left for doing so, or fully automatic.

The ibeacon function can also be implemented with arduino and a extra plugin-hardware, or with raspberry and a BT 4.0 USB dongle, in this case it could be included in the same hardware as already are controlling the relay(s).

The car could have a ibeacon as well, and if the relay-controller hardware have bluetooth LE, it could sense difference between an empty garage and when the vehicle is inside.

Lots of possibilities, apple has some patents recently granted around some of this stuff, with passenger and car sensing each other etc.

[Mikedibble]

One more user interested in the the concept.

[aurelutz2007]

I"m also interested.

[support]

To keep everyone up to speed on how things are progressing with Beacon support ...

We've been working for the past few months into incorporating Apple's new Beacon technology. We have it working
but as we thought, there are some "flukes" with proximity events being triggered (false positives) and it's just not 100%
reliable, as we had initially thought.

So to make a long story short, we decided not to incorporate Beacon support directly into our app as it's not "core" to
the product and we believe that reliability just isn't there yet.

Instead, we'll be adding to our already existing "url scheme" so that external applications will be able to trigger actions
such as open, close or toggle on any configured devices. Applications such as Launch Center Pro
fully support these URL schemes and also just added Beacon support (as well as Geofencing).

We believe this is the best way to go for our users and for our product. Stay tuned for our next release
which will include the extended "url scheme" required to fully automate our app, externally.