How To Make Your Dumb Garage Door Smart
Want to know how to make your dumb garage door smart? Then read on!
This is a guide that will give you some options depending on how much money you want to spend and what features you absolutely need.
We’ll go through the options for what we believe is the best smart garage door opener on the market.
Why A Smart Garage Door Opener?
Heightened Security!
This is smarter security for your garage, even if you already have a garage door opener. One of the nicest features with a smart garage door opener is that you can be notified every time the garage door has been opened.
If you have the app set up for multiple users then you can know who in the family is home at all times.
You can open it from anywhere!
If you’ve ever lost your keys and been trapped outside your own house then this might be just the item you are looking for! You can open your own garage door without the keys as long as you have access to the app on a smartphone.
It’s automatic!
My wife asks me if I closed the garage door every single night! You know why? Because I constantly forget to close the garage door. Well, she used to anyway.
With a smart garage door opener, you can set it up to close automatically. There is a sensor that you can use to close that garage door after you have entered the garage. This is a lifesaver and a time saver for forgetful me.
Are you ready to ditch the buttons and open yourself up to a smart garage door opener?
Then read on!
What Is The Best Smart Garage Door Opener?
This is where we put the rubber to the road. We tested out several different garage door openers and for our purposes, we ended up liking literally everything that Chamberlain makes for smart garage door openers.
Primarily there are a few products that they make that I tried and can recommend. I’ll refer to them in two levels so that I can relay this to you in a common sense way.
Level 1: We just want to make our dumb garage door opener smart
For most people who already have a garage door opener, this is the most inexpensive and flat-out easiest way to make it smart and literally takes about 15 minutes to actually install.
If this is the case then I highly recommend the MyQ Smart Garage Hub. It’s very small but does exactly what you are looking for.
Make sure you read the instructions though! Their guide that comes with it is very specific on how this smart garage door opener is to be installed.
What I mean by that is that the sensor unit needs to go on the top panel of your garage door. The hub unit needs to be mounted very near where the garage door stops when in the lifted position as well.
Like a typical guy I hate reading instructions, but I really REALLY hate ladders and heights. But after messing around with some ideas that didn’t require me to get on a ladder I decided to actually follow the instructions that came with it and now it works with no issues at all.
Be warned though! The alarm is…… alarming!
Level 2: I need a new garage door opener anyway and am looking for a smart garage door opener.
If that is the case, then it really boiled down to two different options that I can recommend. Both of these garage door openers do the same thing, but one is rated to lift a heavier garage door.
The Chamberlain B550 is the best bet for most garage doors.
It is incredibly quiet, strong and durable and comes with built-in MyQ technology which will allow you to open, close, and know the status of your garage door from anywhere through the MyQ app.
I loved the range of this garage door opener. With their Triband technology, it boosts remote range up to 1,500 feet which is pretty impressive.
A Wireless exterior keypad permits access with a four-digit secure code as well. It does include the dumb 2 3-button remote controls that let you control up to 3 openers just in case.
If you are concerned with the security they are top notch. They actually have a 2.0 100 Billion code encryption built in to protect against hacking, and it also has a Posi-lock anti-theft protection which will stop anyone trying to open the door by force.
The other option would be to step up to their Chamberlain B550
The primary differences that I could find are that the 550 has a battery backup, which helps out during a power failure and that it offers 1 1/4 HP lifting power which could come in handy if you have a larger door that you are dealing with.
Compatibility
If you are just trying to make your existing dumb garage door opener smart and are concerned about compatibility. I can assure you that after testing several different smart garage door openers we found that the MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener by Chamberlain had the best compatibility across the board.
They were made to work with Garage Door Openers that were manufactured after 1993. If you would like to look at a complete list of every opener that it works with and make sure that yours is compatible before buying, then you’ll want to check out their list.
Conclusion
Yes, there are other options for smart garage door openers out there. But after trying a few of them and reading a lot of reviews online I feel comfortable recommending anything by Chamberlain. With that said, Chamberlain is also compatible with both Alexa and Google Home, so they are the perfect match for most smart home enthusiasts.
Please feel free to look around the site for information on some of our other smart home projects and recommendations.
I also have a few of these dumb home into smart home types of articles and they might be right up your alley.
