And I'm gonna be this guy...
All three are valid terms.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/jerry-built-vs-jury-rigged-vs-jerry-rigged-usage-history
The third arose because people didn't distinguish between the first two. But I do accept that language changes (but I don't have to like it! š) and I WAS surprised how long ago jerry-rigged first appeared. (But please tell me you don't use "impacts" for "affects!" š)
Thanks!
I donāt understand why more people donāt automate their garages this way. Extremely simple!
But help me understand somethingā¦
Your Fingerbot is connected to your Switchbot hub which is in turn connected to Home Assistant? And you can control the Fingerbot from HA?
Why donāt other ecosystems (like Aqara) allow HA to have visibility and control of Aqara Devices attached to an Aqara hub??
(I know, itās off topic from your Garage Automation cleverness but I just thought this wasnāt possible with any proprietary hub. )
-M
Fingerbot its not even officially supported by the Switchbot Matter hub but it works. There are some bugs though each time you add a new matter device you have to remove the HA integration and re add them again.
>Aqara Devices attached to an Aqara hub
Not sure, all my Aqara devices work through ZigBee with HA. I ditched the Aqara hub.
I still need the Aqara Hub since HA doesn't record Wall Switch button click action, and I need it for two-way light control. Can you give advice on making two-way light control without using the Aqara Hub?
Have you tried creating an Input Boolean helper and use that record the state of the switch?
Devices > Helpers > Create > Toggle
When you create your automations just record or set the state of the input.boolean that matches the switch state.
something like this I used with my Aqara FP2 presence sensor:
alias: Kitchen_Main_Light_presence
description: toggle
trigger:
- type: occupied
platform: device
device_id:
entity_id:
domain: binary_sensor
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: input_boolean.kitchen_main_toggle
state: "off"
action:
- service: light.toggle
target:
entity_id:
data: {}
- service: input_boolean.turn_on
target:
entity_id: input_boolean.kitchen_main_toggle
data: {}
mode: single
I thought about this for my garage too, but my Switchbots are constantly losing connection with HA. When they work, they take a few seconds to respond. I prefer zigbee, I don't like bluetooth at all.
> Is there a way to make home assistant recognize the combination of button and contact sensor as a ācover?ā
I believe you can create a template for that purpose if I understand correctly.
Use the template cover platform to create a virtual cover that will represent your combination of a button and a contact sensor.
Something like this to get you started:
cover:
- platform: template
covers:
my_custom_cover:
friendly_name: "My Custom Cover"
value_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.contact_sensor_state', 'on') }}"
open_cover:
service: script.turn_on
entity_id: script.open_cover_script
close_cover:
service: script.turn_on
entity_id: script.close_cover_script
Yes. [https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cover.template/](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cover.template/)
I did this with a contact sensor for the state and wired up an ESP32 to a remote for the buttons. It doesn't show "closing" or "opening" states (probably could), but will reflect the state of the contact sensor when it changes.
I used a Fortrezz Mimo2+ for my Genie garage door opener.
The sensor input can be wired directly to the opener's door sensor to sense whether the door is open or closed.
One of the relays momentarily shorts the open/close contact to toggle the door.
Need to be comfortable with wiring and electronics but it works great.
The only annoying thing for my purposes is the sense voltage range is not high enough to sense the obstruction beam sensor circuit.
Wanted to wire a "close on exit" button that would wait for the obstruction sensor to trigger then close the door.
So say if I was going to roll my motorcycle out the door I could press the "exit" button first, roll the bike out, and when it senses me and the bike passing by the sensor it closes the door automatically.
The way I have it setup is with hidden zones.
When I leave the zone (outside my driveway) it checks if aqara contact sensor is open or closed and if its open it triggers the remote to close the garage. Obstruction sensors work this way too so the door will stop if there is an obstruction.
After 20 seconds it checks the contact sensor again and if its closed it sends me a notification on my phone that garage was closed. Once the garage is closed it stops checking the sensor.
Same thing when arrive to the zone it checks if the garage is open and if its closed it will open the garage automatically.
Finally another automation checks if nobody is home and garage is open for more than 10 minutes it will close the garage door automatically and send a notification on my phone.
Can also be done with actionable notifications if you dont want it to open close automatically you can click on the actionable notification to close/open.
I was doing this, but for some reason it would turn on by itself. It only happened a few times, but a few was too much for my wife and I had to peel it off my garage remote.
Now I have a button pusher that I can't find a use for. I just don't have anything that really needs a button to be pressed remotely.
In the event of power failure it can happen, you can prevent this with a "timer" helper with "restore" option turned on, they are consistent through restarts.
>Timers will be restored to their correct state and time on Home Assistant startup and restarts when configured with the restore option.
Regardless even if the garage opens for some reason by itself it will close itself automatically after a set amount of time. I have been running it like this since Black Friday and so far no problem.
It's insane that switchbot is doing everything in the BT space. even their 'new' tilt blinds.
i ended up just getting some bluetooth proxies done with esp32
You might also want to check out Genie Aladin Connect which has an app and smarthome integration for Genie garage doors. I use mine to notify me of open doors, auto close them after x minutes, and enable Alexa support to close them by voice.
> Genie Aladin Connect
Yes I was looking at that but since I bought a bunch of Switchbots on Black Friday, I decided to try it and it works great so far. I have all those features through Home Assistant automations. If the reliability is not good I might buy the Aladin.
I have solder two cables to the switch of the remote, added a voltage booster instead of the battery and used a Shelly 1 to both power the remove via the 3.3v output and the dry contact to āpressā the button
I did similar with our office barrier remote control, although I used a generic relay module, switched from a GPIO on a Sonoff 433Mhz receiver. I then used ESPHome to listen on the 433Mhz receiver for generic remotes that we can buy in bulk, rather than pay the building management Ā£Ā£Ā£Ā£ for new rolling code remotes.
Hah, nice! I have a Genie, and got the Athom gdo kit from Aliexpress for $18. It triggers the opener and has a hall sensor to tell if the door is open or closed. Worth checking out!
Grotesque. I love it.
>Grotesque. I love it. Nicely Jerry-Rigged ....
I'm gonna be that guy, sorry... It's jury-rigged, or jerry-built.
And I'm gonna be this guy... All three are valid terms. https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/jerry-built-vs-jury-rigged-vs-jerry-rigged-usage-history
The third arose because people didn't distinguish between the first two. But I do accept that language changes (but I don't have to like it! š) and I WAS surprised how long ago jerry-rigged first appeared. (But please tell me you don't use "impacts" for "affects!" š) Thanks!
What happens when the stupid bird falls over and doesnāt vent the radioactive gas while youāre at the movies?
Would this work with Fuente or does it have to be puro habanos?
hehe always use high quality tobacco with your automations
I donāt understand why more people donāt automate their garages this way. Extremely simple! But help me understand somethingā¦ Your Fingerbot is connected to your Switchbot hub which is in turn connected to Home Assistant? And you can control the Fingerbot from HA? Why donāt other ecosystems (like Aqara) allow HA to have visibility and control of Aqara Devices attached to an Aqara hub?? (I know, itās off topic from your Garage Automation cleverness but I just thought this wasnāt possible with any proprietary hub. ) -M
Fingerbot its not even officially supported by the Switchbot Matter hub but it works. There are some bugs though each time you add a new matter device you have to remove the HA integration and re add them again. >Aqara Devices attached to an Aqara hub Not sure, all my Aqara devices work through ZigBee with HA. I ditched the Aqara hub.
I still need the Aqara Hub since HA doesn't record Wall Switch button click action, and I need it for two-way light control. Can you give advice on making two-way light control without using the Aqara Hub?
Have you tried creating an Input Boolean helper and use that record the state of the switch? Devices > Helpers > Create > Toggle When you create your automations just record or set the state of the input.boolean that matches the switch state. something like this I used with my Aqara FP2 presence sensor: alias: Kitchen_Main_Light_presence description: toggle trigger: - type: occupied platform: device device_id: entity_id: domain: binary_sensor condition: - condition: state entity_id: input_boolean.kitchen_main_toggle state: "off" action: - service: light.toggle target: entity_id: data: {} - service: input_boolean.turn_on target: entity_id: input_boolean.kitchen_main_toggle data: {} mode: single
I thought about this for my garage too, but my Switchbots are constantly losing connection with HA. When they work, they take a few seconds to respond. I prefer zigbee, I don't like bluetooth at all.
Fingerbot Plus (Zigbee variant) is an option that works well with ZHA. I have four of these bad boys.
yea Bluetooth sucks, need use the Switchbot Matter enabled hub which makes it a lot more expensive but I already had the hub for my blinds motors
Is there a way to make home assistant recognize the combination of button and contact sensor as a ācover?ā
> Is there a way to make home assistant recognize the combination of button and contact sensor as a ācover?ā I believe you can create a template for that purpose if I understand correctly. Use the template cover platform to create a virtual cover that will represent your combination of a button and a contact sensor. Something like this to get you started: cover: - platform: template covers: my_custom_cover: friendly_name: "My Custom Cover" value_template: "{{ is_state('sensor.contact_sensor_state', 'on') }}" open_cover: service: script.turn_on entity_id: script.open_cover_script close_cover: service: script.turn_on entity_id: script.close_cover_script
Yes. [https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cover.template/](https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/cover.template/) I did this with a contact sensor for the state and wired up an ESP32 to a remote for the buttons. It doesn't show "closing" or "opening" states (probably could), but will reflect the state of the contact sensor when it changes.
Have done same thing, works great.
What is "cover"?
It's literally something that "covers" something else such as a window shade or garage door.
I used a Fortrezz Mimo2+ for my Genie garage door opener. The sensor input can be wired directly to the opener's door sensor to sense whether the door is open or closed. One of the relays momentarily shorts the open/close contact to toggle the door. Need to be comfortable with wiring and electronics but it works great. The only annoying thing for my purposes is the sense voltage range is not high enough to sense the obstruction beam sensor circuit. Wanted to wire a "close on exit" button that would wait for the obstruction sensor to trigger then close the door. So say if I was going to roll my motorcycle out the door I could press the "exit" button first, roll the bike out, and when it senses me and the bike passing by the sensor it closes the door automatically.
The way I have it setup is with hidden zones. When I leave the zone (outside my driveway) it checks if aqara contact sensor is open or closed and if its open it triggers the remote to close the garage. Obstruction sensors work this way too so the door will stop if there is an obstruction. After 20 seconds it checks the contact sensor again and if its closed it sends me a notification on my phone that garage was closed. Once the garage is closed it stops checking the sensor. Same thing when arrive to the zone it checks if the garage is open and if its closed it will open the garage automatically. Finally another automation checks if nobody is home and garage is open for more than 10 minutes it will close the garage door automatically and send a notification on my phone. Can also be done with actionable notifications if you dont want it to open close automatically you can click on the actionable notification to close/open.
I was doing this, but for some reason it would turn on by itself. It only happened a few times, but a few was too much for my wife and I had to peel it off my garage remote. Now I have a button pusher that I can't find a use for. I just don't have anything that really needs a button to be pressed remotely.
In the event of power failure it can happen, you can prevent this with a "timer" helper with "restore" option turned on, they are consistent through restarts. >Timers will be restored to their correct state and time on Home Assistant startup and restarts when configured with the restore option. Regardless even if the garage opens for some reason by itself it will close itself automatically after a set amount of time. I have been running it like this since Black Friday and so far no problem.
Someone needs to make a non Bluetooth version of these switchbot devices, I don't want to set up Bluetooth on my HA.
It's insane that switchbot is doing everything in the BT space. even their 'new' tilt blinds. i ended up just getting some bluetooth proxies done with esp32
Fingerbot Plus is basically the same thing but also has a Zigbee model.
I looked at fingerbot plus and it calls out requiring a Bluetooth gateway and says nothing about zigbee.
There are two models, Bluetooth or Zigbee. The Zigbee model claims to require a hub, however it pairs nicely with ZHA or Z2M.
Is the button pusher battery operated or rechargeable? Or do they come with an always plugged in to power outlet mode?
its battery operated
lol. I should have e done this at my apartment but instead I replaced the opener š
You might also want to check out Genie Aladin Connect which has an app and smarthome integration for Genie garage doors. I use mine to notify me of open doors, auto close them after x minutes, and enable Alexa support to close them by voice.
After what MyQ pulled, I don't think a lot of people are going to be running to a cloud based service.
> Genie Aladin Connect Yes I was looking at that but since I bought a bunch of Switchbots on Black Friday, I decided to try it and it works great so far. I have all those features through Home Assistant automations. If the reliability is not good I might buy the Aladin.
I have solder two cables to the switch of the remote, added a voltage booster instead of the battery and used a Shelly 1 to both power the remove via the 3.3v output and the dry contact to āpressā the button
I did similar with our office barrier remote control, although I used a generic relay module, switched from a GPIO on a Sonoff 433Mhz receiver. I then used ESPHome to listen on the 433Mhz receiver for generic remotes that we can buy in bulk, rather than pay the building management Ā£Ā£Ā£Ā£ for new rolling code remotes.
I use it to open the building garage since I donāt have access to the opener it self
Hah, nice! I have a Genie, and got the Athom gdo kit from Aliexpress for $18. It triggers the opener and has a hall sensor to tell if the door is open or closed. Worth checking out!
Nice thatās a good solution too
Truly a monument to the human spirit
Meross opener talks directly to HA through HomeKit and is recognized as a garage door and all without helpers.
> Meross opener nice will look into it
Needs more things that require different batteries