Setup Garage Door Control Over the Internet using 2gig Home Security Panel

 

 

I've set up a garage control over the internet, finally.

System diagram looks like the one above.

We have a home security system that has a capability to hook up a z-wave based garage door remote controller. And this security system allows us to operate from over the internet and cellphone apps, which we very much appreciate, I wanted to take advantage of it especially the cell phone app, rather than adding yet another apps on our already-crowded cell phones.

Some hurdles I faced:

• I have to call the tech support at the security company multiple times. First the passcode for z-wave toolbox on my 2gig panel wasn't shared when the system was installed so I had to ask for it. Then when after z-wave transceiver (GD00Z-4) was recognized by the 2gig panel, it still didn't come up on the web system (alarm.com) yet, which was also something security company took care of for me.
• GD00Z-4 didn't seem to be returning the remaining battery amount of a tilt sensor that is attached on the garage door/shutter. So I may have to manually check it, which is kind of non-smarthouse.
• The LiftMaster product at my house may be a bit older so that it doesn't have wiring interface as the GD00Z-4 instruction mentions. Customer support of Linear/Nortek suggested to wire in a parallel manner, which turned out to be working great for me.

Despite some cumbersomeness during installation, I'm pretty satisfied so far (well only a day passed :p) particularly now I can pretty much operate the garage shutter in the same way that I handle all the event triggers on security system, so for example I now set a "garage shutter left open" event that notifies me after certain amount of time passed. Good for my wife who's too busy to close the garage almost every week!