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!

Comments

Popular Posts