All of us have our forgetful moments such as not having closed the garage door after leaving home, and that has us worried and stressed until we can get back. At times like this, we miss the advantage a remote garage door would have given us. Although automated garage door openers are readily available, they use proprietary software, which we may not be able to tailor to our requirements.
OpenThings now offer OpenGarage, an intuitive and easy-to-use garage door monitoring and controlling device. Apart from monitoring the door status remotely, the user can also close or open it from anywhere. Apart from this, you can also check the history, receive notifications, and even use the automation feature to auto-close the door. Now, even if you have forgotten to close your garage door, with OpenGarage, you can access, monitor, and control it from your office, home, or while traveling on the road. OpenThings offers a free app for use on your mobile, and it allows you to remain in contact with OpenGarage always and from anywhere.
However, the greatest advantage of OpenGarage is it is an open-source product. That means you can easily access the complete software code, and customize it to fit your own specific need. As it is a Wi-Fi enabled gadget, OpenGarage has a built-in ultrasonic distance sensor and a relay. You can modify it to use it as a sump pump controller by monitoring the water level in the sump, or use it as a parking sensor for making sure the car is parked at the required safe distance.
If you do not want to use OpenGarage to control a garage door, you can connect more sensors to it, such as humidity and temperature sensors, and use it as a Wi-Fi enabled weather data logger. The instruction video OpenThings provides makes it very quick and easy to install OpenGarage.
There are several advantages of using OpenGarage and its accompanying app. Apart from the ease of accessing, monitoring, and controlling your garage door remotely, using the intuitive OpenGarage UI on your mobile means you do not need to carry an extra remote control unit. The app shows the present status of the door on your screen, and you can always toggle it open or close.
OpenThings places updates for their device and app on the OpenGarage Github repository. That makes it easy to use the web interface for updating the firmware in the device—simply click on the update button at the bottom of the page.
Sometimes the update may fail due to various reasons. You can then do a factory reset by holding the button on the device—keeping it pressed for about 5 seconds—then follow the steps for setup. If this step also does not work, simply use a USB cable to flash the new software, following the instructions.
OpenThings has designed the OpenGarage app to enable control over several units that may be required in a multi-garage setup. Therefore, not only is this web-connected door opener useful for individuals alone, it is useful for commercial garages as well.
