Hello, so I’ve been on the hunt to “alarm” my garage door(not the entry to my house, the big door that opens and closes for us to park in the garage). First I tried to put a window/door sensor on my garage door, thinking it would notify me when the link was broken, just like a door. However the sensor would flash red vs blue showing it wasn’t working when I mounted. So then I tried to use a motion sense and again, would flash red vs blue when I tried to get it mounted. So clearly something about my garage is a dead zone bc the second I walk through my door to go inside, the devices work again and show blue again. What’s crazy, is I tried to mount the motion sense literally on the other side of the entry door and it didn’t work. But works when inside the door. So a distance of 2 inches. Separated by a standard/normal door. It’s straight crazy. What’s even more mind boggling is I have cams on the other side of my garage and on the other side of my lawn and they connect fine and they are twice as far away then what I’m trying to do on my garage door. And more mind boggling is I have a motion sense outside on my front porch(linked to my doorbell) and that motion sense works just fine and connects to my home base inside. But I go into the garage, and it’s red light city. If anyone can answer this riddle, I’ll be surprised. Anyone else tried to “alarm” their garage door at all? Looking like I may have have to outsource from Eufy to find a solution, sadly. I’m out of ideas and options to try unless this thread yields any results.
I have my garage door set up with a door sensor and it works fine. My sensor is mounted beside the door on a wooden block and the magnet rides on the door. I had to add the block because the lifting cable was in the way when the door was down.
Be aware that you can’t equate camera performance to sensor performance. The cameras use a frequency of 2.4 Ghz to communicate and the door and motion sensors use 920 Mhz to talk to homebase. It might be instructive to check and see what frequency your garage door opener uses. Most of them are around 486 Mhz, but they do make 900 Mhz garage door remotes.
Another test would be to operate your garage door manually without using the motor. See if your sensor works then. It sounds like something is generating interference that swamps the sensor signals to homebase.
Your set up is the exact idea of what I was attempting to do. I agree something in the garage is blocking the signal bc it’s a dead zone in there for both the door/window sensor and the motion sensor. Guessing it has to be the garage door system. Even when the system is not is use as i can just walk the sensor into the garage and it goes from blue status light to red. I don’t even have to operate the garage system for it to not work. Guess I’m out of luck then, shoot. Just not sure why mine is a deadzone and yours is not. Based on your post, it’s likely my garage door system just runs on to high frequency? But is strange the signal gets blocked even when not using the garage system. One would think it would only block the signal when it’s in use.
Its probably more likely something generating interference than being blocked unless your garage has a lot of metal around it. If it happens when you are just walking into the garage, but not operating the door, then its not the door motor. Try unplugging anything that is running all the time one item at a time. Furnace, door opener, freezer, etc. Then try activating the sensor and see if it works.
To illustrate the kind of weird things that could cause issues, the other day I started having trouble live viewing a cam in my back yard that has worked fine for over a year. It would just whiteout and not show anything. I have a spectrum analyzer and looked at the frequencies the homebase uses and there was a massive spike of noise in that band. After some investigation found that the neighbors dad was adding a deck in back of their house and was using a power saw during the day. Every time he turned it on, the spike showed up and the harmonics from bad brushes in the saw were all over the 2.4 Ghz band. He got a new set of brushes and everything returned to normal.
Got it. My garage appears to be a normal/standard 2 car garage. Obviously can’t see it on the inside but nothing shouts out of the ordinary. The devices certainly don’t work when in the garage, even when the garage door system isn’t being used. The only other electrical system in my garage outside of light bulbs is a deep freeze. I’ll unplug that and run a test here today.
It’s not clear to me what distance the homebase is at from the sensor. Could be that it’s just a little too far when waking through the door in combination with the wall etc.
So if it’s quite far away, a simple test would be to move the homebase closer so you can exclude any interference from other devices.
So I got it working. I unplugged the electrical stuff to rule that out as the cause. I then did as your idea suggests, and moved my HB to a couple new locations and finally found a spot that worked. So it must have been essentially distance related. So I currently have an entry sensor on my garage door and it’s working as it should. Yay!
The issue now is my HB is in a location that means I can’t hear it from my upstairs bedroom. At least not enough to wake me in the middle of the night in the event of someone trying to get in. So I solved a problem and created a new one.
I’ve complained several times to Eufy about their siren volume and limits.
I guess I have to just keep reminding myself they are a new company and keep my fingers crossed they listen to feedback.
Glad you figured out a solution.
Don’t know if you have any other smart home stuff, but I believe the Echo Dot and some other devices can be used as remote alarms that will work with Eufy gear.
There was also a Topic on this board that described hooking a phone jack into the homebase speaker to allow it to feed an amp and remote speakers for more volume.
One other idea would be to repurpose an old phone or tablet with the Eufy app and leave it powered up so if an alarm came in, it would be loud enough to wake you at night.
I have a PC hooked to my TV in the bedroom running an Android emulator and the Eufy app all the time. If I get an alert, I just grab the remote and can view the clip on the big screen.
There are probably lots of other solutions to the alarm volume issue, depending on how much work and money you want to commit.
I’ll look into it! Thanks for the suggestions!