Open garage door from mobile phone

Joined
30 Mar 2015
Messages
3,828
Reaction score
58
Country
United Kingdom
I have a gliderol electric garage door. This has a keyfob but I was wondering if there is a way to control the open and close action from my phone? I can see that there are a few options for the US market but wasn't sure on their suitability for the UK and whether anyone has any experience on their reliability, etc.
 
Sponsored Links
I only have one alarm cable in the garage and that's running the PIR. I don't have any easy options to run another cable out here. Does that rule out this option?
 
Is it safe, my father-in-law had a motorised garage door, simple remote control only, and the times I would knock the door to tell him it was open, and on one occasion we found a cat locked in the garage. It is bad enough closing the door as you walk into the house and not watching it close, but using a phone remotely you have to consider the dangers.

His could be opened or closed from a button inside the garage, which was not accessible when there was a car in the garage without climbing on the car, and without a car too high for a child to reach.

Also it would auto open if any resistance felt, in his case for some reason he had carpet in the garage, and if it shifted to under the door that was enough to send door up again. So you would need some thing to show you open or closed on the phone.
 
Sponsored Links
I have Garadget units fitted to my doors, will do what you want, from the US but checkout their items on eBay.
 
Search 'GSM switch' on ebay or similar. For about £20 you can buy a mobile controlled relay that can be toggled simply by ringing the number of the PAYG sim card installed into it. If you know what you're doing you could wire this into the door controller, but bear in mind the safety warnings issued by others here.
The CL1, for instance, can send a message to your mobile giving its current status, but unless you wire it correctly it won't reveal whether the door is open or closed.
 
You could wire in a sonoff with some tinkering and connect it to wifi and google assistant. Security may be an issue!? Or perhaps use some other form of "smart switch"
 
I've also gone for Garadget, ordered it in from the UK. And I have to say it's brilliant! Easy to setup, and just works. I'm using it with a Chamberlain door opener. I'd been looking for a solution for ages, as we have our Freezer in the garage, and I've always been frustraed having to come into the house to open the garage door (old Chamberlain remotes no longer work).

Biggest pain with Garadget was paying Royal Mail £12 for the privalidge of importing it from the USA. Also at the time they only had European USB power supplies available, but that was not a problem. It gives me alerts when someone opens the door, it's quick, and slick piece of tech which I'd been waiting for the big manufactures to make for years and a little company has solved the problem for me.
 
Thanks for the suggestions all. I am having second thoughts after considering the unattended nature of this...
 
As this thread is just over a year old I thought I would add my comments as I’ve just fitted a smart WiFi garage door opener to our old Chamberlain system. I fitted this new add on today. The old up and over garage door, Chamberlain operated remote failed a couple of years back and as we are on lockdown I ordered a Meross smart garage door opener. Very simple to fit and it leaves the inside push button in operation. The Chamberlain 500ML unit was installed back in 1998 ish, so I was not so surprised when the remote failed and parts were no longer available, but I did miss not having it. I did a bit of online research and the Meross unit read well. Comes with good installation instructions and cables. All I needed to add was 3m of plastic conduit so I could feed the Open/ Shut cable for the units read-switch thats necessary for the doors notification you get when operating., this I ran along the top of the chain rail with plenty to spare. So for about £30 we are back having the garage door fully operational with a smart WiFi app .
 
There a number of options and a lot of electric garage doors have the option to hard wire a button or a extra low voltage input to open/close them, and often can be interfaced with automation type relay modules; however security is a big concern. What happens if you open it up whilst your away by accident, don't notice and then your stuff gets stolen in the process?

Where I lived at my previous place, I had my electric garage door hooked up to X10 using a universal relay module and could open it up from anywhere in the world. Needless to say this was not a good idea with how I implemented it, least not because the garage was attached to the house and had a door directly into the house.
 
Haha, I had X10 back in the day. Anyway, I can’t comment on other smart openers but Meross has an auto shut if you wish to activate plus other options so the days of leaving the garage door open are on the way out if you smart automate it.
 
As this thread is just over a year old I thought I would add my comments as I’ve just fitted a smart WiFi garage door opener to our old Chamberlain system. I fitted this new add on today. The old up and over garage door, Chamberlain operated remote failed a couple of years back and as we are on lockdown I ordered a Meross smart garage door opener. Very simple to fit and it leaves the inside push button in operation. The Chamberlain 500ML unit was installed back in 1998 ish, so I was not so surprised when the remote failed and parts were no longer available, but I did miss not having it. I did a bit of online research and the Meross unit read well. Comes with good installation instructions and cables. All I needed to add was 3m of plastic conduit so I could feed the Open/ Shut cable for the units read-switch thats necessary for the doors notification you get when operating., this I ran along the top of the chain rail with plenty to spare. So for about £30 we are back having the garage door fully operational with a smart WiFi app .
Sounds good, so one question, how do you ensure a child or cat has not gone into the garage when the door is closed?
 

DIYnot Local

Staff member

If you need to find a tradesperson to get your job done, please try our local search below, or if you are doing it yourself you can find suppliers local to you.

Select the supplier or trade you require, enter your location to begin your search.


Are you a trade or supplier? You can create your listing free at DIYnot Local

 
Sponsored Links
Back
Top