Garage door left open notification

Using a Sense on my garage door, could I get a notification if the garage door was still at 10:00 PM? I don’t want a notification every time it’s opened. I’d like a routine to run at 10 PM and check. Maybe using IFTTT.

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You might be able to do this with IFTTT Platform, but it requires a bit more work and some coding (and you have to set up a Platform account). For example, I have an IFTTT custom recipe set up to turn my Philips Hue lights on if the door opens after 5pm. I imagine you could do something similar with your routine if you’re willing to put in the time to learn the basics of Platform.

I second this suggestion. I think it’s a very common use case. Get a notification if your garage door has been left open (for a certain amount of time) after 10PM. The scenario is that people open their garage doors, for example, I am working in the front yard for hours. I then come in, have dinner, and forget to close the garage door. When it get’s dark or at bedtime I would like an alert that I have left the garage door open.

The current left open alert is too simplistic for that, it needs to be surrounded in conditional logic. Shortcuts can’t really accomplish this either. First of all, they don’t have an alert action. Second of all, when on a timer, they really only turn the capability for left open on and off. If the door is already open when the timer turns on notifications, you will not get an alert.

As it stands now, the only thing to do is to set an alert up when the garage door is open beyond some reasonable open time frame? But, if I set to catch leaving the door open when I come home at night, I need the time interval to be short, something like 5 to 15 minutes. But if I set that, then during the day, when I routinely leave the door open for longer than 15 minutes, not only do I get an alert I didn’t want, if I ignore that alert, i.e. I am doing some work in the yard, then I have lost the ability to get an alert later that night.

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Your first option is to have a smart light that turns on when the door is open. This would be your indicator in the evening that the door has been left open. You could do this using a Wyze Bulb or Wyze Plug (coming soon) and the Wyze app, or a you could use a third-party smart bulb or plug that you trigger using IFTTT.

For a more elegant solution, I recommend checking out this fantastic post that outlines how to use apilio.io to do something very similar: Advanced IFTTT use without an engineering degree. (Step by step guide)

Here are the specific steps you’ll need to follow for your slightly simpler case:

A. On aplio.io, follow the steps outlined in that thread to establish a Boolean Variable, a Condition, and a Logicblock for the Garage_IsOpen logic, Omit the IsHome portions, and do not select “Automatic evaluation” in the Logicblock.

B. Create four IFTTT applets that do the following:

  1. Set the Boolean variable to true if the contact sensor opens (IF Wyze THEN Webhooks using a GET to the Apilio “Set true” URL)
  2. Set the Boolean variable to false if the contact sensor closes (IF Wyze THEN Webhooks using a GET to the Apilio “Set false” URL)
  3. Trigger the apilio Logicblock at 10 PM (IF Date & Time THEN Webhooks using a GET to the Logicblocks evaluation URL)
  4. Trigger a phone notification if the Logicblock has a positive result and sends a web request to IFTTT using the Event Name you selected (IF Webhooks THEN Notifications)

Using these steps, you can have Apilio track the state of the door (something IFTTT can not do) and at 10 PM ask if the door is open. If it is, you’ll get a notification on your phone.

Either way, good luck!

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Thanks for the details on the external logic needed to make such an alert work. I am hoping that Wyze continues to add functionality to their alert logic because the majority of people will not use an external programming engine.

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Isn’t this running a check and asking Wyze if at exactly 10:00pm the door is open? I think the use case is to get an alert if the door opens after 10pm

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