I successfully adopted the Konnected Garage Door Opener to Home Assistant and calibrated the Opener Sensor calibration using the built-in HA service to 0.94m while the door is open. Observing the garage door opener data from it’s IP address page, I can see that when the door is open it shows 0.93-0.94m for Door Opener Sensor distance. However, when the door closes, the Door Opener Sensor distance changes fluctuates between 0.61-0.70m but the Garage Door state will remain Open unless I use the Door Opener Restart switch. After the reboot, it finds the correct Closed state. I customized the Optical Laser Range Sensor Margin of Error in the ESPHome config to the following but it didn’t help: open_garage_door_distance_margin_of_error: “0.2”
Any advice would be much appreciated…
Removing the cover fixed mine. I think (but do not know) that either the cover was obstructing part of the view of the sensor, or the sensor was being fooled by internal reflections.
Sometime the sensor is mis-aligned in the enclosure, or there are rough edges on the sensor window that are causing reflections and mis-readings of the laser sensor. I just wrote a quick article with some tips to adjust this:
When the garage door is closed, the sensor reading should be greater than the reading of an open garage door.
Let us know if this helps the problem!
Thank you both for the advice and the helpful article. I may move my sensor since it’s directly above the track and may be aligned over the plastic windows atop of the garage door.
@nate The sensor distance is a greater number when open than when closed as seen in my screenshots, not sure what sensor reading you mean.
Yeah that is a problem. That’s what I mean, the sensor distance should be greater or NA when the garage door is closed. When the garage door is open, the sensor should see the top of the garage door rolled up at the calibrated distance. When the garage door is closed, there should be nothing in the view of the sensor except for the ground or a parked car … and either of those should be farther from the sensor than the top of the garage door.
What is it reading at 0.62m when the garage is closed?
Thanks fellas, took your advice made some adjustments to the sensor location on the ceiling and all is well in the world. Sensor distance reporting NA when closed and status changing to Closed on its own as expected. In previous sensor location, the track may have been its path as well as some storage items that were down below on the garage floor. I now have it over an empty parking spot so it’s definitely more precise.
If I were to mount the garage door sensor towards the middle of my garage, how far away from the center track/rail should I keep the sensor away to avoid interfering with the sensing of the garage door?
The laser sensor emits a cone-shaped beam with a 35 degree to detect the presence of objects in front of it. It all really depends on the height the ceiling and the distance from the device to the track, but to be safe, leave at least 2 feet in all directions away from the track to avoid it picking up any reflections.
I’ve moved the garage door sensor to just over 2 foot away from the center rail. The issue im running into in home assistant and on the web ui for the sensor, is that home assistant shows the door opening and closing every minute in the logs. Along with the sensor web page showing erradic readings. For example, the “Garage Door Opener Sensor calibration” has consistently been .34 meters since running the calibration. The “Garage Door Opener Sensor distance” fluctuates every few seconds between .20m and 1.1 meter. This is while the garage door is closed is consistent regardless if there’s a vehicle parked under it (approx 4 feet below the sensor).
@panterra74012 Sounds like the sensor might be catching reflections from the edge of the enclosure or something else. It sometimes needs a little bit of an adjustment to make sure that the sensor is centered in the opening. Check this article for some tips: Troubleshooting the Garage Door Opener optical laser range sensor
I went ahead and removed the top enclosure to rule out any edges reflecting or anything and the vehicle parked is approximately 4 foot belowthe sensor and im getting the same behavior every 30~ seconds with the sensor saying the door is open then closed along with the distance still fluctuating.
Can we see a picture of the garage to get an idea of the orientation and where it’s mounted?
Yes sir. The sensor is just over 2 foot from the center rail and the calibrate distance from the door to the sensor is .34 meters. The car is about 4 foot below.
Can you post a log of the sequential readings from the sensor (while the garage is closed)?
You can get this from the device’s web-page, the logs scroll on the right side of the page. The sensor reports a reading every few seconds.
The positioning looks ok.
@panterra74012 I see that the state is constantly flipping from open to closed. Definitely see the problem, I just don’t see enough info to know why.
What I’m looking for is a log like this. It’s curious that the log you posted doesn’t show any sensor readings. This log is showing the actual numerical reading of the sensor every couple of seconds:
In this case my garage is closed and the sensor is (pretty consistently) seeing the top of my car about 1.1 meters from the ceiling.
Are you seeing these sensor readings in the logs?
If not, can you go into the ESPHome add-on in HA and check for a firmware update?
Is this a GDOv1 or GDOv2?
Sorry for the delay. I do appreciate your time. Ive got the GDOv2-S, as I ordered it just after Christmas and received it mid February. I checked and all appears to be up to date. On the Konnected app, it shows 0.4.2 with ESP Home version 2023.10.6. Leaving the logs open for several hours, I’ve yet to see anything log a distance. Just the same as the screen shot from earlier.
I also went ahead and reset the opener and im getting the same behavior. Would this warrant an RMA by chance?