The Virtual Garage Door (VGD) plugin monitors one or more Indigo devices to track the garage door as it moves through its operational cycles. It saves the door states in the states dictionary of a VGD opener device. The states are displayed in the Indigo Home window and are available for use by scripts, action groups, control pages, triggers, and other plugins. The VGD plugin also provides actions to close and open the garage door.
VGD opener devices work with Apple HomeKit by using the HomeKitLink Siri (HKLS) plugin. After installation and setup, you can use the Apple Home application to monitor and control your garage doors. With any Apple device, you can also monitor and control your doors verbally using Siri. Say "Siri, check the garage door status" or "Siri, open the garage main door".
The VGD plugin can monitor a wide variety of optional devices that are available in Indigo as supported devices or through existing 3rd party plugins. These include both z-wave devices and custom/wired devices. Device types include relays, contact sensors, tilt sensors, and multisensors. Please see the latest list of supported devices.
The garage door tracking accuracy depends upon which monitored devices are selected and the door's operational cycle. The wiki Design page (Section 3.4) contains a detailed discussion of the tracking performance under a wide range of conditions. This allows the user to select the set of monitored devices to best meet his specific needs.
VGD v2.0 includes two optional capabilities that provide improved user safety and security:
The first capability provides opening/closing action groups and delays. It allows users to optionally specify an action group and/or a delay to be executed before the garage door is opened or closed. It can be used for any purpose, but is well suited to mitigate the safety issue inherent in unattended door operation (see the VGD wiki Section 5.1). In this case, an action group that sounds an alarm and a delay of 5 seconds will meet the the Consumer Product Safety Commission's requirements for safe unattended door operations.
The second capability provides VGD lock devices and optional locking/unlocking action groups. The VGD plugin creates a new lock device for each opener device. Locking the lock device will disable all plugin actions except unlock. It will then optionally disable power to the opener and/or engage a separate mechanical lock device to physically secure the door. Optional locking/unlocking action groups can also be configured to meet any other user security needs.
| Requirement | Description |
|---|---|
| Indigo Version | v2022.1.0 or later |
| Python Library (API) | v3.0 or later |
| HKLS Version | v0.6.61 or later |
| Requires Local Network | Yes |
| Requires Internet | Yes |
| Hardware Interfaces | Various z-wave / custom devices from the supported devices list. |
Please see the VGD wiki for details on the design, configuration, and use of the plugin.
You can download the latest version of the plugin at the Indigo Plugin Store. Your bug reports, comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Please post them on papamac's VGD user forum.