Ecolink Garage Door Tilt Sensor Shortcomings

So far my ring cameras and ring alarm system have not disappointed. Even some early questions were handled quite handily by Ring Support. Overall my experience is close to a 10 out of 10.

I purchased the Garage Door Tilt Sensor from Ring.com and although I clearly understood it did not interface with the alarm system as other sensors (contact sensors, motion sensors, etc) I assumed it would report “open or closed” through the App so I could see at a glance if the door was open or closed. I’ve hoped for this type of sensor many times after leaving the house and wondering if I’d closed the garage door.

To my disappointment I discovered the following:

  1. The open/closed condition of the sensor IS NOT reported on the Dashboard either as a sensor opening below the Alarm functions or in the History.

  2. IF the system is Armed Home or Away there is a chime (user configurable tone) that audibly reports on the Base Station. But, this is of no use if you are away from your home and trying to find out if your garage door is open.

SUGGESTION: Have the open/closed report on the Dashboard as other sensors do in any alarm mode and have it listed on the History. And, have a push notification of Open/Closed sent as well.

  1. To find out any information about the sensor one must drill down into the Menu - Devices - Alarm Base Station - and find the Econlink Garage Tilt Sensor listed under sensors. But even here the open/closed condition is illogically reported as “Clear” or “Faulted” for Open/Closed. This should be modified to logically report “Open” or “Closed”.

This seems like a good idea that has been poorly executed so far. It would be my hope that if Ring is going to sell a product on their website, presumably making some profit on the device, there should be enough integration testing to ensure the device provide sufficient information on the Dashboard to be perceived as part of the ecosystem.

TO BE CLEAR: Even tho this sensor is reported within the Alarm Base Station I am not suggesting it should be a “police dispatch” item or “armed” as contact and motion sensors. Simply fix how the information is reported to the user.

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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.

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I completely agree. I thought the idea of a garage door sensor was a great one. I had hoped it would help me avoid going to bed without realizing the garage door had been left open. However, with the status buried way down in the device section of the app, the sensor is nearly worthless to me. I would love to be able to glance at my dashboard and see that the garage door is open. Even better would be to have the ability to schedule a push notification if the garage door is left open after a user pre-defined time. For my own use, I might pick 10pm which is a time after which my kids/dog are basically done coming/going, but still before I usually head up to bed. I hate going outside in the morning to find that a garage door was left open, and better integration of the Ecolink Garage Door sensor would dramatically reduce the chances of that happening, thereby making my Ring alarm / camera system even more valuable to me.

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Wish I would have found this before I purchased two tilt sensors. What a waste of money. Come on, fix this and add it to the dashboard as the initial user suggested. Thx

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Do you have any updates for us with this sensor? Looking to purchase this item to add to our system but won’t do it if it doesn’t function as most would expect.

Hey @ched03 ! The Eco Link Garage Tilt Sensors can notify you of open, close, and tamper events. It can also be used in Alexa routines for additional functionality. Additionally, while it does not show on the dashboard, the Alarm device list can be sorted by category, name, or room to allow for potentially more convenient viewing in the app.

At this time, professional monitoring and triggering the Alarm siren are not features of the Tilt Sensor.

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/”