In my VW ID.4, Carplay is an essential companion in my daily life; I basically have my smartphone environment available directly in the car. Now it would be practical to also be able to control the garage door from the car. In other words, when I drive home, I want to open the garage door directly in the car and that’s exactly what I did. The entire conversion costs just under 15 CHF.
Shelly app now also available for Carplay
Upgrade your garage door for smart controls
I have an EazyMatic garage door operator that is around 15 years old. It has no intelligence, just a make contact to activate the garage door. In addition to the button in the garage, you can of course also use an additional closing contact; the only condition is that the control must of course be potential-free. I realized this with a Shelly Plus 1, I would work with a Shelly 1 or Pro 1/2. The PM devices with measurement are not suitable for this.
A Shelly Plus 1 makes the garage door “network-capable”
Control the garage door with Shelly or Smart Home System
After integrating the Shelly, the garage door can now be controlled via the Shelly app and also locally via the Shelly’s IP address. So I have now integrated the garage door into the Loxone Smart Home and can access it from anywhere. So far so good, only drawback so far:
I can open and close the gate, but the status is unknown. You would also have to install additional sensors to detect whether the gate is open or closed and whether the command sent lowers the gate, raises it or simply stops it. Operation is now possible via a network, but manual checking is still necessary.
Control the garage door with Apple CarPlay
Open the garage door with Carplay
With these steps and the latest app update from Shelly, control directly via CarPlay is now possible. With the app update, the Shelly app also comes to CarPlay on iOS. For this to work, the Shelly device must of course also be integrated into the Shelly app and be accessible via the cloud. In addition, you must select which devices are also active via Carplay. Then it looks like the picture above, I can open my garage door directly via Carplay, pretty cool right?