On our latest IoT Podcast episode, we take a question that Steve left on our IoT Voicemail Hotline. Steve is transitioning his smart home platform from using Amazon Alexa to Apple HomeKit. However, his family likes the fingerprint sensor door lock in his garage and it works with Alexa. The HomeKit garage door opener Steve bought doesn’t work with that Alexa lock, so he’s looking for options that will let him either keep that door lock or replace it with a fingerprint sensor HomeKit lock.
Unfortunately, we don’t know what HomeKit garage door opener Steve purchased. And that’s important in this case because there are HomeKit garage openers that do work with other smart home platforms.
I suspect Steve didn’t purchase the Meross unit that I did, which costs around $40. Meross actually makes two models: One that works with Alexa, Google Home, and HomeKit and another that only works with the first two ecosystems. So it may be less expensive for Steve to return his current garage door opener and buy a Meross HomeKit-compatible one. He would just need to add the Meross device both to his Apple Home and Amazon Alexa mobile apps.
I did this for testing purposes and have my garage door showing in both the Amazon Alexa and Apple HomeKit apps. Since I don’t have an Alexa lock, I substituted a Wyze bulb that I have connected to Alexa. I set up an Alexa routine to turn the bulb on when the garage door is open in this case. I then used Siri to open the garage door over HomeKit and Alexa immediately turned my test bulb on. So an Alexa lock should be capable of automatically locking or unlocking when HomeKit is used to control the garage door.
This would be a more budget-friendly approach because smart door locks typically cost more than a $40 garage door opener. You’ll easily pay at least twice that much for a smart lock, for example. And there’s another reason we’d recommend replacing the garage door opener instead of the lock: We don’t see any HomeKit locks that have an actual fingerprint sensor.
The closest we could come up with is the $329 Level Touch lock. But as the name implies, it’s touch-capable, meaning you can tap it if your phone is nearby to unlock the door. That’s not the same as fingerprint authentication, which is what Steve and his family are looking for. Eufy does make a smart lock with a fingerprint sensor, currently priced at $169. However, it only works with Amazon Alexa and Google Home, not with HomeKit.
If Steve is transitioning to HomeKit but still wants to keep a smart fingerprint lock to enter from the garage, his best bet is to use a HomeKit garage door opener that supports non-HomeKit devices too. The Meross will handle things on the HomeKit side but still talk to that Alexa-based fingerprint sensor door lock.
To hear Steve’s question, along with our full conversation on the topic, tune in to the IoT Podcast below:
Steve from Canada said he switched his “MyQ” garage door opener (that’s a very popular Chamberlain model) to HomeKit control by adding chamberlain’s “HomeKit bridge,“ which is an add-on module from that company. He didn’t say what brand and model the lock was which would’ve been helpful, but we can work without that for now. (The chamberlain garage door openers are all UL listed and very high-quality, I would keep that.)
So now, getting the lock and the garage door opener to be usable together.
This would be somewhat easier if the family wanted unlocking the door lock to do something with the garage door opener, but that’s not the direction we’re going. I will just mention that you can trigger an Alexa routine from a lock locking or unlocking, so that can be useful for some situations.
THE OBLIGATORY HOOBS MENTION
before going further, I will mention that Hoobs is a standalone bridge device that lets you bring all kinds of non-HomeKit devices into HomeKit. But it very much depends on the exact model as to whether an integration is available. And it’s technically a little complicated to set up. But it is a popular way to bring many non-HomeKit devices into HomeKit, so if you’re technically savvy and you want to find an option that will let you bring multiple non-HomeKit devices into your setup, it’s worth looking into. But it’s not a plug and play solution and it might be overkill if this lock is the only use case.
GARAGE DOOR OPENS, DOOR LOCK UNLOCKS
STEP ONE: USE A SENSOR SO ALEXA KNOWS THE GARAGE DOOR OPENED
So… What can we use as a go-between for a HomeKit enabled garage door opener and an Alexa enabled door lock?
The first thing to look at is Alexa routines. These can be triggered by a motion sensor, contact sensor, or smart lock. (Not a tilt sensor, btw.)
There are now several decent Wi-Fi door sensors that can trigger an Alexa routine. Shelly is unquestionably the best engineered with the best battery life, but it’s technically more complicated to set up. So I’m going to skip that one.
Since the caller is in Canada, I’d recommend the Geeni WiFi door sensor. No hub required, works well with Alexa, four star rating at Amazon Canada. Reasonably priced at about $55 Canadian for a two pack.
https://www.amazon.ca/Geeni-Smart-Wi-Fi-Window-Sensor/dp/B07RM859GV/
(This device is also available in the US.)
Position this on the garage door so that the sensor closes when the garage door is all the way open.
Now we have a sensor that can be used to trigger an Alexa routine.
STEP TWO: CREATE AN ALEXA ROUTINE TO UNLOCK THE DOOR LOCK
If all we wanted was to turn on a light switch, life would be easy. But Alexa requires a PIN code to unlock a door, and that makes things more complicated. But it can be done using a pro tip: the “custom action” option in an Alexa routine.
You can only have one custom action per routine and it has to be the last step in the routine. But it allows you to enter in text ANYTHING that you would say to Alexa, and that includes an unlock command with a pin code. Yay!
The pro tip is that you have to put a hyphen between the “unlock garage door” text and the pin code text to create a pause.
So once you get that set up, you use HomeKit to open the garage door. When the garage door opens all the way, the Alexa-compatible door sensor closes. The door sensor closing triggers an Alexa routine which opens the Alexa-compatible lock with a pin code.
One Reddit user detailed these steps about a year ago, so I’ll link to those details.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AugustSmartLock/comments/p25agp/august_auto_unlock_work_around_solution/
A couple of people in that thread said it didn’t work for them. They may not have put the custom option as the last thing in the routine or they may have been in a country where the option is not available or they may have a specific lock model that it didn’t work with. Or they may have forgotten to enable “unlock by voice” in the Alexa app, since that’s what makes this work. (Not the “unlock by app” which might seem more logical, but just isn’t how Alexa custom actions work.)
But it does work for a lot of people, so it’s certainly worth a try. (I just created a new routine right now and it worked fine for me.)
OR WAIT A FEW MONTHS
It’s entirely possible that Matter Will solve some of this problem. Again this is where it would help to know the brand and model of the lock. But if the lock gets matter support, you should be able to bring it into the HomeKit app, and then you’ll be all set. You’ll probably be able to create a HomeKit automation for to link the garage door and the matter-enabled lock.
It’s also possible that eufy will come out with a HomeKit-enabled version of its fingerprint lock.
But we’ll just have to wait and see on those possibilities.
IN THE MEANTIME
you can do this today just by adding an Alexa-enabled WiFi sensor to the garage door and using an Alexa routine as the intermediary. (You’re limited to a total of 99 routines per Amazon account, so that’s just something else to keep in mind.)
Good luck!
I would keep the garage door opener he has (chamberlain MyQ is a top brand with excellent safety features) and just add an Alexa-enabled Wi-Fi door sensor to tell Alexa when the garage door is all the way open.
In Canada, Geeni would be a good choice for this. They have a two pack for about $55 Canadian. The brand is also available in the US.
Then you can just create an Alexa routine triggered by that sensor closing to unlock the existing lock. You will have to enable the lock for voice control (not app control) in the Alexa app and add a PIN number. Then use the “custom action” option when creating the routine. Put the custom action as the last step in the routine and use the following format:
Unlock lock name – pin code
It won’t work without the hyphen because you need a pause between the unlock command and the pin code.
So something like
Unlock garage door – 4321
That should do it. Keep the existing garage door opener and the existing lock and just add a Wi-Fi sensor so Alexa will know when the garage door is open.
(I wrote a long step-by-step note about this with links to both the sensor and instructions for creating the routine, but it got held for moderation because of the links, so I wanted to go ahead and put this shorter note up now.)
In another year or two we should either see more fingerprint enabled HomeKit locks or the ability to bring some non-HomeKit locks into the HomeKit app via Matter, but since we’re not there yet, adding a $25 Wi-Fi sensor should be a good interim solution.
As with most things, the first rule of home automation applies: “the model number matters.”
Some Alexa-enabled locks Allow Alexa to unlock them. Some only allow locking. For the ones that do allow unlocking, Alexa requires the use of a pin code, something that it does not do for lightbulbs or light switches.
So even if you use a Meross garage door opener, solving this use case isn’t quite as simple as it might seem from your lightbulb test. You can’t just put the lock as the action in the routine, the way you did for your light.
Instead, you have to use the pro tip that I mentioned in my previous post, and use the “custom action“ feature in the routine for a lock. And even then, there’s a trick to including the pin code in the custom action, as I described.
I don’t think I need to go through all those details again, but it’s just something to be aware of. Locks have special security rules on most home automation platforms, and that includes Alexa.