Lose the remote: Open your garage door via phone, voice assistant, or IFTTT recipe

By Bruce Brown October 20, 2016

Your garage door just got a lot smarter. Skylink‘s ATOMs Garage Door Opener (GDO) is the first smart-home garage door opener compatible with the industry standard If This Then That (IFTTT) platform.

The ATOMs GDO comes with a passcode-protected, 3-button remote and you can control it with the SkylinkNet app on your Android or iOS phone, but the real smart-home fun starts with IFTTT recipes. With IFTTT you can select or build your own connections between compatible devices. That means you can set up conditional actions called “recipes” that will occur as the result of something else.

Here are some examples of IFTTT recipes you can configure with the ATOMs GDO. For starters, you can control your garage door with Amazon Echo devices. You can also use an Android Wear Smartwatch to open or close the door. You can set up geo-fencing — a GPS-defined perimeter setting — so your garage door opens when your phone turns into your driveway, with or without your car.

Another IFTTT example suggested by Skylink is a recipe whereby when a Nest Connected carbon monoxide detector activates the garage door, opening it to ensure better ventilation. You could set a Philips Hue light in your kitchen or bedroom to glow a certain color when the garage door is open. As you add more IFTTT compatible devices to your home those can be included in recipes as well.

The ATOMs Garage Door Opener has a down-facing LED light, a backup battery, and wireless connectivity with an LCD wall console. Installation is faster and easier because you don’t have to string wiring to connect the wall unit with the opener.

According to Gallen Tsui, Skylink’s president, “The ATOMs Garage Door Opener is the only garage door opener that can interact with other industry-leading connected home products on the market using IFTTT. Using our Internet Hub to interact with the IFTTT network, users not only have a means of opening and closing their garage, but are exposed to an alarm and automation gateway in the connected home that adds convenience and functionality to everyday life.”

The ATOMs Garage Door Opener is available now at the Skylink web store for $300.

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Digital Trends Contributing Editor Bruce Brown is a member of the Smart Homes and Commerce teams. Bruce uses smart devices…

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