There might be cases when you want your contractors or friends to temporarily access your garage door.
Follow these steps.
1. Create a new gmail account just for this purpose. Don’t use your personal gmail account.
2. Register the an IFTTT account with the new gmail account you have. Login to ifttt.com.
The general idea is that we will create two applets in IFTTT to make it work. The first applet is that when you send an email to IFTTT from your email account, it will open/close the garage door. The second applet is that when your contractor or your friend sends an email to you with the password/code you gave them, this second applet will automatically send an email from your email account to IFTTT to trigger the first applet to open/close the garage. A filter will need to add to your new gmail account and this filter serves as the gatekeeper for authentication.
Create the first applet
1. Go to “My Applets” and click “New Applet”.
2. Click “+this” to select a trigger condition, select Email as a trigger.
3. Select “Send IFTTT any email”. Click “create trigger”.
4. Click “+that” to select an action. Type ‘webhooks’ in the search field. You will see “webhooks” service in search result. Choose ‘Webhooks’ service.
5. Click “Make a Web request” and configure the form.
a. URL: Use the URL as shown in the app.
b. Method: POST
c. Content Type: application/json
d. Body: {"token":"************", "garagedoorindex":"1"}
Replace the "************" with the one you get from the GDB remote app. garagedoorindex can be “1” or “2”.
don’t forget to put curly braces in the body. Make sure use straight double quotes instead of other type of quotes. See different quotes format here. http://practicaltypography.com/straight-and-curly-quotes.html
e. Save the configuration
6. Send an email to test if the garage door responds. The email title needs to include “#80a0b895-f260-4626-bebd-7f69e837fa99”. If the garage door responds, your first applet is done.
Create the second applet.
1. Click “New Applet”
2. Click “+this”.
3. search for ‘gmail’. click gmail in the search result. you will be prompted to ask for gmail access.
IFTTT asks for lots of access of your gmail. that’s why we recommended a new gmail account to not mix with your existing personal account.
4. Grant access for gmail.
5. Select “New email in inbox labeled”.
6. Fill “garagedoor” in the label field. Click “Create trigger”.
7. Click “+that”, search for gmail again and click gmail.
8. select “Send an email”.
9. Fill “trigger@applet.ifttt.com” in the TO field.
10. Put anything in the subject. Ignore the rest of fields. Click “Create action”.
Add a filter to your gmail account.
For each guest, you need to add one filter. To disable the access, simply delete the filter.
1. Go to this website to generate a UUID which will be used as the temporary password/code for your guest. UUID is guaranteed to be unique. For example, here is a UUID that was generated from the website.’80a0b895-f260-4626-bebd-7f69e837fa99′. Or go to random password generator website to generate a code. http://passwordsgenerator.net/
2. go to your gmail account. Click settings icon on top right. Select settings from menu.
3. click ‘filters and blocked addresses’ tab.
4. click ‘create a new filter’.
5. in ‘from’ field, type your guest email address.
6. in ‘to’ field, type your gmail address.
7. in ‘has words field’, type the password/code you generated.
8. click ‘create filter with this search’ on bottom right.
9. check ‘apply the label’ and create a new label ‘garagedoor’. Finish creating the filter.
Now if your guest sends an email to your gmail with the code in that email, it can control your garage door.
To disable the temporary access, simply remove the filter in your gmail account.
It might have a delay to open/close the garage door because it will take some time for the emails to arrive. You can monitor when your guests open/close the garage door by looking at your email or looking at IFTTT activities.