Make garage door smart

There are several things which can be made smart easily and quickly. And then, unfortunately, there are things which would be extremely practical, but are also complicated due to the often rather older garage door drive. After a long search, I nevertheless found a cost-effective and easy-to-implement solution to make (almost any) garage door smart.

What were my requirements for a smart garage door?

I have a garage door from Hörmann about 15 years old: Supramatic E2
This I can open and close by means of pushbutton in the garage and by remote control, but I lack the certain comfort:

• Garage door could be opened with the remote control only from a maximum distance of 5-10 meters
• Turn on the exterior lighting automatically was not possible
• Status query to the gate was not possible. So I always had to physically look

That’s why I set out on the addiction

My search

For new or newer garage doors, it is actually very easy to find a smart system today. At least smart enough to allow you to operate an additional app. However, I wanted a solution that could also be operated via smart home systems such as Home Assistant.

With that, the search began: one difficulty was that there are apparently thousands of providers. However, I was able to limit this challenge well, since my garage door was not to be replaced. Then I came across many solutions for more modern garage doors, which already have an interface integrated on the motor (For example, from homematic ip). However, this is not yet integrated with my garage door.

Already a bit desperate due to the fact that I apparently yet had to change the drive, if I wanted to make the garage door smart. I finally came across the solution, which is described in the next chapter.

My recommendation

I was able to conclude my search with the Meross Smart WLAN garage door opener. The big advantage of this solution is that it uses the pushbutton interface. This means that (practically) all garage doors that also have a physical button connected can be operated with it. So that the status of the garage door can then also be queried, there is also a magnet for this purpose. This is also connected to the Meross garage door opener and thus reliably displays the status of the garage door. The small and inconspicuous device can be mounted directly by the garage door operator and is hardly visible. The connection is established via the local WLAN and then accessed via the app (cloud). But the best part is the price: only 40 CHF / EUR and there is also a HomeKit-enabled solution.

Installation

The installation is very simple and well described. Even with only a little manual skill, you can be through in an hour. I will put up a separate blog post in the near future about the installation and the integration with Home Assistant.

Conclusion

I have now been able to make my garage door smart and achieve a long-awaited goal. In the meantime, I no longer believed in a good and cheap solution and today it has been in operation for a month: 100% reliable and therefore an absolute recommendation! Here again the link Meross Smart WLAN garage door opener.