The Garage (USA) - doors, lights, cameras & Secure Video
A couple of things may stick out here.
- That weird 3 Wheeler in the outdoor shot is a 1971 Lambro 600v
- I have a few Scooters, nearly all Lambrettas and NO Vespas.
- I have a power switch for MyQ.
There's actually quite a habit going on here, though.
- Pod Bay Doors (Yes I have a sense of humour) are controlled through MyQ
- The 3 Window sensors, a door sensor and one motion sensor are actually courtesy of my Honeywell Lyric Alarm System, which I covered earlier. There is also a siren and a fire/CO sensor in the garage but, unfortunately, they are not exposed to HomeKit.
- There is an "occupancy sensor", which is courtesy of the Netatmo indoor camera I have set up and that supports HomeKit Secure Video. It's not really an occupancy sensor though. It fires off when it recognises someone and turns itself off if it hasn't seen that person for a while. It's really more of a fancy Motion Detector.
- The Side Door is using a Level Bolt, which I consider to be the best HomeKit smart locks on the market today.
- The Netatmo Outdoor camera is covered in an earlier post
- I've covered the Projector Screen in an earlier post
- Outdoor power is provided by an iDevices outdoor smart plug, which I also covered in the post about the Projector Screen.
- I have a HomePod pair, again covered in that earlier post.
- Some Lights:
- Main Door and Side Door are actually Hue White Ambience
- Ceiling is a group of Fluroscents controlled by Leviton Decora smart switches.
MyQ Garage door opener.
When I bought the house, it already had a lift master garage door opener installed. This is a fairly old model that did not have WiFi but did have a wired remote. I installed a MyQ Home hub, which provides HomeKit compatibility.
I must say that this is one of the worst home automation products I have installed. Quite often I will get "no response" from HomeKit, but it will work from the MyQ app. I always found that rebooting the bridge fixed the problem.... and that's why I have the Smart Switch so that I can easily restart the hub remotely.
Liftmaster have replaced by hub and it did get better, but still has not resolve the problem at all. Because of this, when I put my new motorised gate up, I will be using iSmartGate which seems to get a much better score with customer satisfaction.
Indoor Camera
I just recently retired my D-Link Omna camera. Whilst I thought it was an excellent camera, it seems that D-Link have discontinued it and are not intending to add HKSV support. I have quite a collection in that garage, so I wanted to make sure it is as secure as I could make it.
Netatmo Indoor
Initially this Netatmo Indoor camera was the only camera I had running HKSV as to run more I needed to upgrade my iCloud storage subscription to 2TB and I was waiting for the new AppleOne service bundle to happen before I did that.
The Camera gives a pretty good field of view. I can see both the roller door as well as the side door and all the windows. Basically, unless they drop from the ceiling, I can see anyone who enters the garage.
From inside the Camera view, I can see all the devices that impact the garage.
For me, the most useful one of those has been the Lyric, the controller of which is actually in the Vestibule, not the Garage. It shows up here because of the sensors I have in the Garage.
It's actually quite a distance from the Garage to the Vestibule, and so I have found it quite convenient on a couple of occasions when I have opened the garage door and forgot to switch off the alarm!
Setting up the camera is done by first setting it up in the Netatmo Security App, by "Adding a product".
and then you can set it up in HomeKit, first of all by selecting the capability in the Netatmo App. Weirdly, the camera generates it's own picture that goes into your photos of the HomeKit code.
"The motion sensor triggers for any motion detected and stays triggers for as long as the motion event is happening.
The occupancy sensor triggers when the camera detects a person and stays triggered for 5 minutes after the person is no longer detected.
The occupancy sensor triggers when the camera detects a person and stays triggered for 5 minutes after the person is no longer detected.
Personally, I see no benefit to that really. It mya be because I have true Occupancy sensors in the house.
I think these two items are of the most interest.
I have set up HomeKit Secure Video to do Facial recognition. However, to use facial recognition, you have to record and, as you can see, I have switched off recording whilst we are at home. I really wish it could be down to a specific room rather than the whole house.
Due to Covid-19, one of us is always at home! So nothing to show there I'm afraid.
More Options enables you to be more specific about what you want to record. I have pets and cars switched off.
Lights.
As mentioned, I have a few lights.
Over the side door and over the roller door are Hue White Ambience. This was the occasion for me installing a 2nd Hue hub which lives inside the garage where I also have an extension to my mesh network.
The Ceiling lights are fluorescent lights and are controlled by Leviton Decora Switches. As the garage was a relatively recent addition to the house, there are lights witches at both entrances. However, the wiring was a nightmare and this is the only time I couldn't work out what was going on and had to call in an electrician... and even they said it was difficult to work out what was going on... because the installers had not used standard wiring practices!
The Switches I have are:
I have also set up a group called Garage Ceiling, which contains all the fluorescent lights.
Automations.
Fairly light here (pun not intended), other than the Scene for outdoor movies, I have an Automation that turns off the lights should I close the garage door which, so far, I only do when I'm outside the garage. I have no occupancy detectors in the garage. I'm sure if I lived in colder climates I may have a different view.
Similarly, I've not felt the need to turn lights on if I open the garage door, a though that is the next logical step.
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