A Homebridge Plugin for controlling your garage door via your iOS device.
Being frustrated about the lack of homekit-enabled garage door openers which don't need any modifications on the garage door itself, I created my own solution. Oh and it's pretty cheap too.
The setup is pretty straight forward. All you need is a raspberry pi or other device running homebridge. A modified remote control (details are down below). That's it.
There are already some plugins out there doing something similar. The problem with this simple setup of mine is the lack of a reporting functionality/backchannel 'cause all I am doing is triggering the opening of the door. Therefore homekit doesn't know anything about the current state (opening/open/closing). Most plugins need some kind of sensory input to tell homekit exactly that. As I can't tell homekit what state the door actually is in, I just pretend to know and give homekit some information to work with.
As I am living in a house with multiple parties, I can't modify the garage door electronics directly. So I looked for an other way. I just used the existing remote control which is a Sommer Handsender 4020 which is pretty common in Germany and modified it.
PLEASE NOTE THAT I DON'T HAVE MUCH EXPERIENCE IN BUILDING ELECTRICAL CIRCUITS AND THEREFORE WON'T PROVIDE HELP IN BUILDING THE CIRCUIT.
npm install homebridge-simple-garage-door-opener -g
Clone the latest release here. Install via npm -i -g.
You don't need that much to get started. Just tell Simple Garage Door Opener which GPIO you want to use and you're good to go. (More options available)
"accessories": [{
"accessory": "SimpleGarageDoorOpener",
"name": "SimpleGarageDoorOpener",
"doorSwitchPin": 12,
"simulateTimeOpening": 15,
"simulateTimeOpen": 30,
"simulateTimeClosing": 15
}]
Feel free to give me feedback, create PRs or submit issues, enhancements and bugs.