What Are Smart Garage Door Openers?

Electric garage doors allow you to benefit from the convenience of a door that removes the physical effort of their operation. While traditional doors are operated via radio transmitted remotes, smart garage door openers use the Wi-Fi instead. This gives you greater control over its operation as you can operate it from your smartphone or through Bluetooth connection with your vehicle.

Why use smart garage door openers? Traditional radio transmitters have been prone to hacking in the past. Although it’s much harder to do so in recent years, there’s still the possibility of it happening. A smart opener will remove this issue by making it harder to hack. It will also be useful for anyone who is prone to losing small gadgets; as long as you have your smartphone with you, you’ll be able to access your garage.

Because your smartphone operates the garage door, you’ll be able to see features and statistics, as well as receive alerts. Some models allow you to see whether it’s open and can integrate with other smart devices in your home, such as lights, cameras and speakers. This gives you a greater level of security, customising how it operates and what turns on when you need it to.

If you’ve already got an electric garage door, a smart opener can be retrofitted relatively inexpensively. Starting from under £20, these devices upgrade your existing setup to work with the Wi-Fi. State-of-the-art models can easily be anywhere above £100, but all systems are different. It really depends on what you want from your smart electric garage door opener. If the cheapest option works for you, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go for it.

Some of the best smart garage door openers send you notifications whenever your garage door has been opened. You can also see the history of its operation, allowing you to track anything suspicious. Others can connect up to three doors, giving you greater flexibility. Larger homes with multiple garages could make use of this. Some models even offer cloud storage, saving you the hassle of clogging up your device with useless recordings.

While smart speaker integration can be useful, the smart device integration allows you to use it without your voice. For the loquacious, you can ask your smart speaker to open your garage door before you leave the home or ask if to close it when you get back. Many manufacturers offer software integration with IFTTT (If This Then That), giving better control over its automation.

If complete control and smart features are more your thing, some of the more expensive brands offer automatic closure after you’ve left the premises. As well as integration with your existing smart camera, so you can use one app to look over your drive, multiple profiles can be created and customised. You can set time restrictions on certain members of the household, as well as geographical restrictions. This can give you a greater peace of mind, not having to fret about anyone sneaking out or being where they shouldn’t.