No need for a garage door opener sitting on your dash or located in the sunglasses compartment. Garage doors these days often have openers that can connect directly to smart phones and smart vehicles, allowing you to open the door with a touch on your smartphone or vehicle screen. Some openers even use the location to open the door, so that your gate or door automatically lifts when you drive into the area!
In this post, we’ll discuss some of the great benefits of a smart garage door and the different types of smart openers that might be perfect for you.
Benefits of a Smart Garage Door
Security
Traditional garage door openers rely on much simpler signals and wiring, which could potentially be compromised by someone driving by sending out a variety of different signals as they go. There are different types of tech that can be used to send out standard garage door signals as a car drives by, and these signals can be used to fish for doors that respond and open at the signal. This can make your garage and home an easy target for theft.
Unlike traditional openers, a smart opener has a unique hash and a unique signal, which means that other people won’t be able to get into your garage by sending out mass garage door opening signals.
Monitoring
It’s stressful to be sitting in a meeting, on your way to work, or running errands and have the thought run through your head: did I shut the garage door or not? An open garage door is an invitation for theft or home invasion, and it can be really annoying to head home. Even if the door isn’t left open after all, it’s a hassle to stress out about it!
Smart garage doors, just like smart ovens, solve the age-old problem of worrying about putting the home in shutdown mode before leaving. Even if you’ve left your garage door open and are out and about, many smart garage doors can be shut from anywhere using a wifi signal that connects the door to your house.
Ease of Use
It’s easier to open your door without using a button. When you can simply drive into the area and the door automatically opens, it saves time and makes you feel like you’re really home! Even if you have a button on your car or phone to tap to get in, it’s a lot easier than having a garage door opener with batteries that run out and a signal that stops working as well as you want it to after just a few months.
Access for the Whole Family
One of the biggest perks of a smart garage door opener, especially for larger families, is that it’s really easy to set up every member of the family with access to the garage. This provides additional security and safety for situations where a family member might not have a key to the front door, might lose the key, or might have forgotten the key in the house! It’s refreshing to know that in an emergency, every member of the family can access the garage. You can even hide a key in the garage or use an additional smart lock on the door leading to the house so that family members can get into the house when needed.
Additionally, you can set up babysitters and friends with access to your garage in case of emergencies!
Smart Home Integration
Smart homes make us more efficient and more productive. They make us feel more at home, offering a sense of familiarity and ease of use which seems to personify the home like a place we belong. With a smart garage door opener attached to your home, you’ll have the opportunity to hook up your garage door with all your smart devices. You can control your garage door from the same app that you use for music, lighting, and all your other smart devices.
Smart Ways to Open Your Garage Door
Phone Apps
You may already use your smartphone to open your garage door, but if not, it’s just a simple app and sensor pairing that will allow you to control your exits and entrances with a single push of a button.
Some apps will use a bluetooth connection, while more modern constructions usually hook up through your wifi to give a more extended range. With smartphone garage door openers, you’ll usually be able to control your door from anywhere. If you’re sitting in a meeting and suddenly get stressed about whether or not you closed the garage door—you can easily shut it from anywhere with your phone.
Some smart openers integrate into an existing smart home setup, meaning that you’ll control the door from the app that already controls your other smart devices. Other smart openers, especially older or cheaper ones, won’t integrate with other smart devices, so you’ll have a special app just for your garage door.
Additionally, there are certain apps that can use geolocation services on your phone to open the door automatically if you’re driving and enter the proximity of your garage door.
Car Apps
Most modern cars have a display with its own OS that can download a variety of apps and use a bluetooth signal to open a garage door or gate. Just like for a phone app, you’ll probably have to install a special opener with a bluetooth connection that makes it easy to open things up from your car. Depending on the car, you can probably get an app that mirrors from your phone to the car itself.
Presence Sensors
If even phone apps and car apps are too complex for your taste, there’s a button free and touch-free way to get into your garage or backyard. Presence sensors can cause the door to open whenever your car enters a predefined location. Get close enough to the gate or door, and the sensor opens the door automatically for you. It’s the easiest, hands-free way to get into your garage. A home so smart, it opens the door for you.
