Ecolink Garage Door Tilt Sensor Shortcomings

Just adding another $.02 to this chain. At bare minimum, the device needs to report open or closed through to the dashboard. Having to drill down 2 levels is ridiculous. I understood going in that it would not trigger alerts and so on, but didn’t realize it would only report ‘online’ to the dashboard. That is useless at best.

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If you want a functioning garage door sensor for Ring Alarm, easy and cheap, just buy a standard contact sensor and a standard door hinge. Mount the sensor to the inside of the garage door. Mount the magnet on a hinge. Mount the hinge so when the door is closed, the hinge sits flat by the sensor (door closed). When you open the door, gravity will drop the hinge mounted magnet (door open). Label the sensor as a “garage door”. Done and fully alram feature functional. And I think much more reliable long-term than those tilt sensors.

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That is an excellent idea. I can visualize exactly what you are suggesting. Thanks!

So glad I found this shortcoming prior to purchasing. The fact that I can not open the dashboard and see the status of my garage door is a major shortcoming. I thought this was exactly what I was looking for until I found this shortcoming. Will keep looking and hope Ring’s corrects this shortcoming soon.
Mike

Brad’s suggestion upthread is a perfect, simple, elegant solution. Uses standard, integrated ring hardware. Attach the big part of the ring door sensor to the garage door in a horizontal orientation. Above it install a standard door hinge, but buy one that’s really ‘loose’ so it moves easily. Screw the top part of the hinge in, leave the bottom free. Attach the magnet part of the sensor to the loose hinge side, I.e. the side closest to the big sensor. When door is closed, magnet and sensor are near each other. When door opens, hinge falls open due to gravity, magnet moves away from sensor, sensor shows open.

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I wanted to add a few comments to this thread about the Ecolink Garage Door Sensor. I’ve added it to one of my two garage doors - working perfectly fine. However - as others have noted - on my Android device…no notifications of sensor open/close. Oddly - my wife’s iOS device (Apple iPhone 8) DOES send notifications via the app of sensor open/close. I’ve checked the Ring app for both of us and both are set exactly the same.

Is it possible that Ring has modified the iOS app to show the notification but not, yet, for the Android version - ???

I’m glad I read this article! Please let us know if this feture is added to the Dashboard, then I will consider purchasing it.

Is there a way to change the status from “clear/faulted” to “closed/open?” I don’t see how to do this in the Ring app.

To my knowledge “clear”, “faulted”, and “tampered” are the only readings. Clear = vertical, implying closed, and faulted = horizontal, implying open.

That’s unfortunate and doesn’t really make sense considering a garage door is commonly “open” or “closed.”

Is there any updates from Ring I’m getting this changed?

It’s weird. When you check CURRENT status, it shows clear/faulted. When the app sends an alert due to CHANGED status, it shows opened/closed.

I think the reason it is so poorly integrated into the rest of the system is that it’s made by a different company; however, it is still pretty disappointing. There is a Ring moderator on here who has occasionally chimed in saying they understand the concerns/interests. One change that was made at some point was to allow notifications of status changes. I actually find that pretty helpful, but what would be ideal is the ability to quickly glance at the dashboard to confirm that the garage doors are all closed.

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Oh yeah, I hadn’t noticed that, but you’re right. The whole thing is a bit weird. I wonder if the other “works with ring” devices integrate better.

@Riley_Ring wrote:

Thank you for this feedback, I forwarded it to the team here and they let me know that they are currently looking into updating the experience for this sensor in the app. We greatly appreciate your insight and passion for our products as we’re always looking to upgrade the experience, which starts with the core Ring security experience. I also wanted to share this Ring Help Center Article that provides a few more details about all Works With Ring products.

Hi @Riley_Ring, would you be able to find out if the Ring team could rename the status of the garage door sensor to “open/close/”

I just transitioned from a Frontpoint system that used alarm.com . We enjoyed a feature they provided that their title sensor would send us a push notification and text message if we wanted if the garage door was open more than X minutes. We now miss this feature and as previously stated a East way to see in the dashboard the state of the garage door or tilt sensor.

I don’t want to use a regular door sensor that would potentially trigger an alarm. Imagine coming home, opening the garage door then taking a call or doing something else in the garage and forgetting to disarm. Now you kick off a loud alarm and would be worse depending on the time of day.

We need a way to not tidy in more than just open and close, amount of time open, and a way to easily see the status.

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Just purchased this sensor and was very disappointed to realize I didn’t read the fine print. I absolutely do want this to tie in to my alarm system and want to be able to use this to set off the alarm if my garage door is opened. This was a feature with my ADT system that I hate to lose. It would be great if Ring could make a simple app change to give this device a couple options!

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Hey neighbors! Thank you for your continual feedback on this integration. Our teams are always working diligently to bring new features that can benefit all our neighbors. I will certainly pass on these additional features and feedback to our team. You can stay posted on our recent updates here. If you have any more Alarm-related feature requests, feel free to post them in ourAlarm feature request thread.

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For those that have used a regular sensor on their garage door, have you ever forgot to disarm and had a false alarm? I have a smartthings system right now and have considered switching to Ring. I have an Ecolink tilt sensor on my garage door and below is my experience.

  1. I find myself forgetting to disarm. I pull in the garage and go check the mailbox. Next thing I know my siren goes off. It’s not monitored so no harm no foul, but with a monitored system this would be an issue. How do you handle it?

  2. I find that my Ecolink has the tendency to have false triggers. I think it’s correlated to battery life and temperature. I can see why Ring has chosen no to certify it for monitoring, but do agree it should show on the dashboard and notify if you arm and the door is open.

Arghs found this after purchasing and installing it. What a disappointment. Come on really? Whole poi t is to see from away or from bed that you indeed closed the garage door or that at least a chirp is triggered when someone opens the garage door

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I almost bought one of these but thank goodness I read this post before hitting the buy button. I may try that hinge with contact sensor idea.