Home Assistant automation
Automating Garage Door Alerts with Home Assistant
A practical walkthrough of improving a garage-door alert loop so notifications explain what the automation sees, then confirm the final door state when the loop exits.
Video
Garage door alert walkthrough
The Tella video covers the Home Assistant automation, the notification loop, the sensor checks, and the final push message once the door is no longer detected as open.
Replay
Session Replay
A sanitized, self-contained replay of the Codex session, focused on the Home Assistant automation changes and the trace debugging that made the final alert useful.
Notes
Making the alert useful enough to act on
A garage-door alert is more useful when it explains why the automation is waiting. The session starts from a simple "garage left open?" notification and turns it into a message that includes which person or motion sensors are active at the time of the alert.
The workflow also adds a final push notification after the repeat loop exits. That makes it easier to distinguish a door that is still open from one that has started closing or already closed, without needing to open the Home Assistant app to inspect the current cover state.
One small but important debugging step was checking traces and sensor history instead of guessing. The unavailable driveway motion sensor was replaced with driveway person detection, so the automation depends on a sensor that is actually producing useful state changes.
Resources
Supporting links
References for adapting the same pattern around Home Assistant's API and local automation workflow.