What is a Smart Garage Door and How Does it Work?
The digital age has brought wonders to our fingertips our grandparents and their parents never could have imagined. Even sci-fi movies from only 30 or 40 years ago didn’t anticipate the rise of digital technology, high speed wireless internet and the reality of 10 year old kids walking around with more computing power at their fingertips than it took to land men on the moon. One of the most incredible technological advances is that of smart devices that can be controlled by a few taps on a smartphone screen from anywhere in the world. And it was only a matter of time before garage doors joined the growing ranks of smart devices.
The Garage Door: Leading the Technological Pack Since 1931
If you asked most people which device led the way in remote control technology most would probably answer the TV. But while the first wireless TV remotes weren’t devised until the mid-1950s, two separate inventors came up with their own versions of radio controlled garage door remotes in 1931. It took another 70 years or so, but local remote control of the garage door has finally blossomed into true global garage door remote control. It’s called the smart door and it’s way more than just a fancy remote.
Why Would You Need Such a Thing?
Sometimes change is beneficial and widely embraced. Few people for instance would argue that advances in medical technology have saved countless lives. But sometimes change is just change and doesn’t really produce anything of value. For instance, you don’t hear many people - other than a few mall security guards - singing the praises of the Segway today. Traffic police hated them, people out for relaxing walks in the park hated getting run off the path by them and most people thought all they did was promote laziness.
Smart garage doors however, fall squarely into the category of beneficial change because they’re more than just a way to show people at the cafe in Paris that you can open and close your garage door from thousands of miles away. They provide a wealth of information and the following useful features.
Access tracking
There are few things more nerve wracking than going away and leaving your teenager or teenagers alone in the house. Will they be okay? Will they turn the house into Partytown? The smart garage door has you covered for these possibilities and more. The smart garage door app on your phone lets you see who is coming and going from your house. It provides you with an access history so you can see when the door was opened and closed. It can notify you if someone is opening the door and built in video capability lets you see exactly who it is opening the door.
Emergency access
While most smart garage door apps will let you program an exact time when the door will open and close, this is one feature that you probably aren’t going to use much. After all, what if you program it to open at 6:05 when you normally arrive home but you get stuck at work or caught in traffic? However, there are other remote access features that may prove themselves very valuable. For instance, if your child locks themselves out of the house when no one else is home all they have to do is call you or text you and you can open the garage door remotely and let them in. You can even watch them on video to make sure the get inside safely and close the door behind them.
Integration with other home security systems
Many smart garage door apps allow you to integrate the garage door with your wider home security system. Let’s say someone decides to try breaking into your home through the garage door (which happens more often than you might think). The smart garage door system will send an alert to your smartphone that something is wrong and tell the house-wide security system to notify your home security provider and/or law enforcement.
The joys of convergence
Most people leave the garage door remote in their car so they don’t forget where it is. But while that’s all very well and good don’t you already have enough pieces of technological hardware to keep track of? The smart garage door app provides you the ability to handle all door functions from the smartphone you’re already carrying around with you everywhere you go. Bringing the control of multiple devices under one roof is called convergence and it can be a beautiful, time saving convenience.
Retrofitting Your Current Garage Door
Maybe the best thing about smart garage door technology is that it can be retrofitted to your existing garage door. While the process doesn’t require an engineering degree it can be tricky and is best done by one of the highly trained technicians from A Better Garage Door. We’ve done scores of such upgrades and can have your garage door effectively linked to your smartphone in short order.
The Bottom Line
The smart garage door is more than just a technological curiosity that’s bound to wind up in the tech graveyard next to the portable record player. It provides genuine value and convenience and can either be installed with a new garage door or retrofitted to your existing door. Talk to the pros at A Better Garage Door to learn more.