Lomota Smart WiFi Garage Door Opener Remote, Tuya Smart Life App Control, Work with Alexa and Google Assistant, No Hub Needed, White

My garage door is an older type that uses a standard doorbell button to open and close from within the garage. I verified that connecting between the terminals worked as shown in the manual too just to be sure. The normal method of opening the door (when you don't have an adapter) is it simply does what your doorbell button would do to open the door by briefly connecting together the two terminals.I do suggest unplugging the opener while working on it because at times your fingers are in dangerous locations and you don't want another family member to open the door. Even if don't have your finger in a dangerous place, the opener suddenly activating could scare you and cause you to, for example, fall off a ladder. I often find warnings in manuals overkill but in this situation please do unplug the opener while you're working. Stay safe.I was working in cold weather with poor lighting. These are common scenarios we deal with in this type of installation. When I tried to decide where to locate the sensor, I realized that above the garage door would require me to fabricate parts to line up the sensor within 1 inch of the door-affixed-magnet. I saw some creative solutions to this problem in other reviews but I decided instead to look at doing this on the side of the door at a height that didn't require me to be on a ladder. For my garage door, this worked fine. There is enough clearance to locate the magnet to the side of the garage door itself and the sensor to the wall beside it. Be careful though! If you have different clearances than me, the magnet could contact other surfaces while it opens. Locating the sensor on the right side of the door instead of above it was worlds easier as I was able to avoid a ladder for this part of the installation.One thing to consider when putting the sensor on the side is if you will have enough wire for the sensor to reach the garage door opener and the wifi opener device. In my case, I had a few feet to spare. If your door is wider than mine, it may be too far away and you may need to go with the above-the-door option.Another struggle I had was one I did not anticipate. My garage door opener is old and simple. It's just wires on screw terminals. However, due to the lack of good lighting, low temperatures, and a very awkward space where my opener is positioned (there is a giant board right behind it that forms part of the structure of the roof), I spent hours on something that should have been a few minutes. From the weird angle I just could not seem to get all the wires fastened to one of the terminals. On my opener, this is because this one terminal has wires for the two "electric eye sensors" and the doorbell button. I was adding one more. This would have been easy in any other situation.What I finally did was use a 'pigtail'. I cut a short piece of wire and stripped both ends. I fastened one end to the terminal, and I used a wire nut to combine all the other little wires with the pigtail. I only had to do this for the one "over populated" terminal. This worked better for me due to the awkward angle and lighting I just couldn't get all the little wires to all wrap around the terminal. Luckily I had a small wire nut handy. If I did not have one handy, I'm sure I would eventually twisted the wires all together the best I could to force them under the screw terminal together.One option to consider if your opener just uses a standard doorbell switch is you could locate the wifi unit near your garage opener button. You could just double up the wires on the terminal screws of the doorbell button. This might also help certain people who wish to install the door sensor on the side as it could be as shorter path for the sensor cable. You would need a nearby electrical outlet for the USB adapter though. If I were to do mine over, I'd probably do this myself.In my case, I used the wire tie to affix my wifi unit to a piece of the metal mount for the garage opener itself. I didn't want to trust the sticky double sided tape.I used standard romex electrical fasteners to affix the cable to the rafters of the garage as it snakes its way to the garage door opener. Most of the length was paired with the openers "electric eye" sensor cable.I have not used google assistant or alexa yet. I may investigate this later.One important consideration -- Be sure you have good wifi coverage in your garage. Mine was "good enough" but not perfect. This could be a show stopper and it would be a bummer to discover you have no signal after having installed everything.Suggestion for seller:* Consider in the product description listing the length of the sensor cable. In my case it was long enough but would have fell short if I located the sensor in a different location. This would help us plan our installation better.* Consider providing an example or photo of a sensor installed on the side. This is mentioned in the small manual as an option but I can tell many people think they can only put the sensor on the top. Putting the sensor on the top, in many installations, is difficult because there could be weather molding or uneven surfaces. Sometimes a sensor on the side, working without a ladder to install the sensor is a better choice than above.* You could mention that the buyer needs to supply the means to secure the sensor wires as it routes to the wifi unit. I used romex electrical fasteners but not everybody will have those handy (and they're technically too big anyway).Product suggestions:* Every person has to use the same account to open/close/monitor the door. This isn't a huge deal but I would have preferred each person using their own account some how linked together. Maybe some people avoid this by using alexa or google assistant. I'm not sure.* It might be nice to include wire fasteners with the product if it didn't raise the price too much.

THE GOOD• Compared to MyQ, it's easier to use and far more flexible. The Tuya/Smart Life platform is rock solid in my experience, and integrates flawlessly with Googl Home and Alexa. Happy to drop the MyQ app which was always trying to upsell me on integrations I didn't need. (FYI, I won't be integrating my garage door opener with Googl or Alexa, because the idea that someone outside my home could just yell "Hey Google, open the garage" doesn't sit well with me... but I could if I wanted to and I appreciate the fact that it's allowed without any further charges / upsells.)• I LOVE the geofencing capabilities that come with the Smart Life app. I've set this to open my garage door when I enter a geofence (106m) around my home, and close the opener when I leave the geofence. It literally just opens when I arrive, and it literally just closes when I leave without any thought on my part.• Set up is very easy - especially if you are accustomed to using the SmartLife app. I've personally started using only home automation products that use this app - its reliable, fast, and the devices are very affordable via Amazon.• The SmartLife app starts up much faster than the MyQ app. I rarely use the MyQ app because it takes forever to open, then you have to log in, then you get to the open door screen. The process with MyQ only takes 15 seconds, but it feels like forever, and it's about 12 seconds too long.• It's ETL listed. This is important! All electrical "stuff" should be UL or ETL listed.INSTALL TIPS• I programmed this to my WiFi before physically installing it. Just makes setup slighly more convenient. Like many SmartLife items, I had to program it manually - the slow blink mode using my iPhone 11 (iOS 14.6).• See the pic attached... I connected the magnet that triggers the open/close sensor directly to the "carriage" that rides back and forth inside a channel / track with the double-sided tape two very small screws. Then I attached the sensor to the track. Doing some testing, as long as they're within 3/4" apart, it works great. If your opener has a carriage that wraps around the track, this method may not work for you. Then, I used some hot melt glue to attach the wire to the top of the track to bring it back to the GD opener motor unit and the Lomota device. This gives it a very clean looking install, and I really don't see any extra wires.THE TBD• I still need to play around with this to make sure it doesn't false open / stop when it should close - Let me try to explain...○ There are four "states" the door can be in. 1)Closed, 2)Open, 3)Closing, 4)Opening.○ The sensor can determine state 1 - if the door is closed. But, unlike MyQ, which I had at my last house, the Lomota has no way of differentiating between open, opening, or closing (states 2, 3, & 4)... it only knows that it's NOT "closed". In theory, if it's in the process of closing (but not yet "closed"), and someone / something triggers another close action, the device could try to close it again and interupt the closing process - like pressing the wall button while it's in the process of closing but not yet fully closed.○ To combat this, I will create an automation in the Smart Life app whereby whenever it things the door has been open for one hour, it automatically closes the door and send me a notification. This way I'll learn over time, how often this automation actually triggers, and whether or not it's something to truly be concerned about. To be clear this is strictly a redundant measure - I expect the Lomota device to work flawlessly, but being new to it, I'm trying to think through "what could go wrong".THE BAD• I suppose the security of the MyQ app may be superior in that it forces you to log in Every. Single. Time., but honestly, it's a PITA. I want convenience, and I'm not trying to build Fort Knox. If someone really wants to break in to my house, all they need to do is break a window and climb through. I think the security features built into Smart Life are *reasonable* and that's just fine for me.• I can't think of anything. negative to write, other than the slightest concern about it's inability to distinguish between the three non-closed states (open, opening, and closing). I don't suspect this will be an issue, so I'm not deducting any stars, but I also have an automation set up which will alert me how often (if ever), the opener is open when it shouldn't be.—-Update after 6 weeks of owning this—-So after six weeks, I have to say I love this thing.• “Siri, [open/close] the garage“ is awesome!• I don’t use geofencing to open the garage anymore… only to close it. I’ve found that on rare occasion the smart life app doesn’t realize I’m home until well after I’ve arrived… causing it to open the garage when I didn’t want it to. That’s bad. But, being able to add the “push to run” automations to Siri, works just as easily. I literally don’t even reach for the clicker in the car anymore!• the alerts are a little wonky, but I’m pretty sure that’s because of my settings• this starts up in the smart life app MUCH faster than the MyQ system I had in my previous home• it just works• I would never go back to MyQ after this, this is so much better at a fraction of the cost.

THERE IS NO SUPPORT FROM SELLER. EMAIL ADDRESS PROVIDED BUT NO RESPONSE.ISSUE #1) I installed 3 of these devices. NONE properly log ("Record" feature) the history of Open and Close events. The log seems random, records sometimes, but I have another brand (same device, different vendor with different firmware). That device properly records each Open and Close events to a "Operation History" log. Further, it indicates the source of the event, that is if initiated from an App or From a Home Garage Door Controller. This feature is extremely important for both security and confirming the state of the garage door. [email protected] does not respond to emails questioning this feature.ISSUE #2) The STATUS Display in the app is challenging to interpret. it shows date/time of last event, but it is not clear what State the door is in OPEN or CLOSED. After about 5 minutes, a very small indicator indicates the state, but it has sometimes shown me both Open and Closed simultaneously as it has 2 small lines of text. To determine the state you have to select the door, which could easily lead to accidently triggering the opening or closing of the door, since it is a function of where you press the icon displayed which represents the garage door controller. On my Other brand, the icon changes to show an open/closed door and the color changes from Blue to Red to represent the state. This makes it much easier to distinguish the status of the door.