Make your dumb garage door smart with Garageio

By Drew Prindle Published November 1, 2013

garageio make dumb garage door smart garageioplusparts — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Your garage door is probably the coolest door on your house. It’s massive, it has a motor, and you can raise and lower it like a portcullis when you pretend your house is a castle (or am I the only one who does that?). Compared to your regular doors, garage doors are awesome – but they do have a few annoying quirks.

For starters, they never seem to come with enough remote openers for you and your housemates, which inevitably forces you to pull that Indiana Jones-style dive-roll to escape the garage after you hit the wall button. And if you’re like me, you unfortunately don’t always retrieve your hat like a boss.

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Alottazs Labs aims to fix these minor annoyances with Garajeio, a device that (you guessed it) makes your dumb garage smart. The device comes in the form of a small squarish module that can be added to your existing garage door opener through a relatively simple installation process. After it’s all set up, it’ll give your garage door opener the ability to connect to your home Wi-Fi network, thus allowing you to open/close it from your smartphone via Garageio’s proprietary app.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first device of its kind. There already exist a handful of other add-on smart openers – there’s GoGogate, SecuRemote, Mobile GDO, and a bunch of others that offer similar functionality. So what makes Garageio stand out?

For starters, it uses Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, which is a big plus. This means you can monitor/control your garage door from anywhere – not just from 50 feet away (at best) like certain other devices.

It’s also got some nifty software functions, such as the ability to remotely grant access to other smartphone users, or shoot you notifications on who is accessing your garage at any given moment. And from the look of it, the app has a pretty slick and intuitive design as well.

Alottazs has recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for the device on Fundable, so while it’s not available for puchase just yet, you can lock one down early for just $129 if you back the project.

Check out Garajeio’s website for more info.

Topics

Internet of Things (IoT)

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…

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