I’m not yet into iOS automation that much but as my home grows smarter and smarter I’m aiming to do a bit more.
Our garage door is smart now. it’s integrated into Homekit with its own button and open/close state which is great. This is farely new. A few weeks ago we didn’t have a motorized garage door at all and as the garage is separate from the house closing it while we were away wasn’t something we even considered. Now that it is smart and our car is electric (combined with the charger and installation in the garage) we’re aiming to keep it closed. But we tend to forget to close it. Thanks to homekit it’s easy peasy to close it from far away but you need to remember.
So what I’m aiming for is something like a “If garage door is open and I’m leaving the home geo fence let me know” (Or even let me confirm a close action).
I don’t plan to do it fully automatic for several reasons so there should either be a push message only or a button to confirm a close action.
I know that there are several apps that help with Homekit automations and I do like Home+ a lot but I can’t seem to be able to fit the confirmation in there. I can totally auto close the garage door but that’s not something I wanna do. Any idea?
Also I’m not sure how the location automations work in that case. Usually automations are saved and run from the homekit central but a location based one may be running on my phone only? Is it shared with the family?
Personal Automations run on your phone, Home Automations can have Shortcut Actions (limited set) and they run on your Home Kit Server.
Try
In Shortcuts
Select Automation
New Home Automation
People Leave (Set your options around this)
Where it shows all the scenes and accessories scroll to the bottom where it says Convert to Shortcut.
You can now add Shortcut Actions that run on your HomeKit Server.
You can try an IF Select Home Accessory to get the status of a device.
PS. Sorry I just noticed you want to do a notification. Notifications aren’t available as an action in Home Automation shortcuts, but you can do one using WebHooks/IFTT.
However you might be able to do without Shortcuts. In the Home App go to the accessory, long touch it, select the settings wheel, then turn on notifications on this iPhone. Notify When I am Not Home, which will probably give open/close notifications when not home, I dont have a garage door type accessory though so might be slightly different.
Not only is this possible with iOS 13 (and 12, IIRC) but it’s the only way it will work (notification which gives you the option to run it, it will not run without confirmation).
Go to Apple’s “Home” app
Tap on the “Automations” tab (bottom right)
Tap the “+” (top right)
Select “People Leave”
Choose “Anyone Leaves”
Tap “Next”
Choose a “Scene” or set the Garage Door to “Closed”
Tap “Next”
Tap “Done”
Now whenever someone who is connected to your “Home” (in Homekit) leaves, they will get a push notification asking if you want to either run the scene or set the Garage Door to closed.
It will not actually close unless you tap the notification and tell it to run.
You might also want to make another automation, assuming you do not want to leave it open overnight.
Start by repeating steps 1 and 2 above.
Then choose “A Time Of Day Occurs” and then go through the same steps to close your garage door…
I made one for 10pm and 11pm (just in case the first one fails for some reason).
This one will run unattended and does not require confirmation.
It all depends on your garage door device and what it returns. Mine reports open and closed states, and it can alert me via email and notification on my phone. This means I have various options on how to deal with a door that is left open.
But some garage doors only report that they changed state, or don’t have alerts, or are in some siloed world all their own, so, it really depends on your smart garage door and what it can do.
@Tjluoma I read about that forced confirmation already. Am I right that this only fires if the state of the door isn’t already set to what I wanna set it to? So let’s say if I enter closed as the wanted state for this automation and the garage door is already closed would it still notify me? This would remove the need for a if/then thing anywhere there which isn’t possible in the way you described, I think?
@lbutlr you are right. Mine also has it’s own app and functionality but my goal was to solve it through homekit somehow. As written in the entry post mine reports its state (it has a sensor to do so).
in shortcuts - automations when you setup the action to happen when leaving it will notify you, as the shortcuts on leaving do not automatically execute, they need manual confirmation
Nope, you’re talking about Personal Automations which run on the phone and do require confirmation.
I’m talking about Home Automation shortcuts, and notifications in the Home app which run on the HomeKit Server, and dont require confirmation.
it is built exactly to support this kind of “smart home question” - should be a good fit.
for now, you can use Pushcut with a Shortcut as action that triggers your HomeKit/close your garage door.
the next version (currently stuck in app review…) will have support for HomeKit actions directly (ie: run HomeKit scenes from notification actions). once it is released I will post a link here to a proper setup guide.
By using Shortcut actions in a Home Automation (not a Personal Automation, or a Home app one). As described above when it gets to accessories, go down to the Convert to Shortcut button and then you can add shortcut actions that run on the HomeKit server.
Thanks @sliemeobn - Pushcut looks like a great app and maybe something I was already looking for. Not especially for this problem here but as I read combining beacons with shurtcuts my heart goes faster
Not sure yet if I agree with the Pro pricing but will definitely give it a test.
Pricing: is it family shareable? If not it will definitely be too high for my case as I need to share that stuff with my wife.
yeah the annoyance is what I was thinking about. I can already imagine my wife getting angry about the notifications when she leaves the house for her daily walk and the car sleeps in the garage.
