Homelink auto close reliable for you?

[CameronB]

Just an update here. On Wed evening I got the 2017.42.a update. For me, it hasn’t changed anything to improve homelink auto close in the first 36 hours of use. Same as before for me...auto open continues to work 100% of the time but auto-close when backing out of my garage is still hit and miss (works 30% of the time, have to manually close door 70% of the time). Bummer.

I love the auto open and auto close (when it decides randomly to be available) feature, though. If the auto close reliability can be improved to near 100% like the auto-open already is (for me), then I will be a very happy camper. But, alas, that time is not 2017.42.a for me.

 

[Impala1ss]

My Homelink has never worked at all. It can not be set up in my MS in spite of all the suggestions from many of you. I just use the remote which came with the new motor installed about 1 year ago. It set up on my Volt perfectly, just not on the Tesla.

 

[AndrewTX]

And this has been a real problem. Sometimes I will pull up as my hubby is exiting the garage and it will start to close on him because it's open and it doesn't know if it's open or closed. Yet the Liftmaster app for my phone always knew which state it was in. I guess this is only 0/1 but rather dangerous and has almost caused accidents. I guess it's a good thing that it now rarely works after the last update. Sigh.

This is why I disabled the auto open/close after a short time using it. I can see it being useful if you will always be the last to leave/first to arrive at your home but that's not the case for me. Until these systems are intelligent enough to know the current state of the door then they have limited utility, IMO.

 

[AndrewTX]

My Homelink has never worked at all. It can not be set up in my MS in spite of all the suggestions from many of you. I just use the remote which came with the new motor installed about 1 year ago. It set up on my Volt perfectly, just not on the Tesla.

I had months of trouble getting mine to work. The only thing that did the trick was resetting the opener back to factory conditions and wiping out all existing programming. Then I was able to program each individual transmitter plus the one in my MS.

 

[BigMskiman]

I've never wanted Auto open/close, so in manual, the Homelink seems to be fixed in .42

I'll try Auto for a BETA experiment

old |v8.1(17.40.1 e29b97f)| AP2 |
new |v8.1(17.42 a88c8d5)| AP2 |

 

[GaryREM]

How does the app know? Is there a special communications channel with the door opener that tells it the state? Good to have if so!

I have an alarm contactor on the door, so I can tell also, but it's sure a poor system when the basic door controller can't tell you which state it's in.

The app knows because it is communicating via an internet gateway to the opener which has status and open/close commands.

Chamberlain has the same system and is a cheap retrofit to most openers. Would be nice if Tesla could interface with this.

Note that newest Homelink DOES have two way communication although not clear you can query status or send an open or close signal.

 

[GaryREM]

So, I discovered that the two way Homelink communication has been around for a while and my Chamberlain opener supports it.

I have a new Crosstrek with Homelink mirror and, after reprogramming it, it now shows which direction the door is moving. So, this means that it should be possible to do a smart connection to Homelink from the car, assuming the right hardware was available.

 

[boaterva]

Excellent. Now to get the cars to know/obey that!

 

[rscott0]

I have confirmed that this (either opening/closing not working all the time when it used to, or being unable to open/close manually) is a bug with the 2017.40 code (obviously it isn't our imagination, but it is nice to confirm), and has nothing to do with radio waves.

Specifically, when Homelink is working properly, the chime will go off and you will see radio waves on the Homelink icon.

With 2017.40 that I still have, coming home, the "Opening in X feet" message will appear, but when it gets to 0, the radio waves do not appear on the Homelink icon. The car is *not* starting the "Open the garage door" function. Something is preventing it, as it will (at least for me) not work manually at that point (until some point in time later, e.g. after leaving the car and getting back in the next time).

 

[CameronB]

With 2017.40 that I still have, coming home, the "Opening in X feet" message will appear, but when it gets to 0, the radio waves do not appear on the Homelink icon. The car is *not* starting the "Open the garage door" function. Something is preventing it, as it will (at least for me) not work manually at that point (until some point in time later, e.g. after leaving the car and getting back in the next time).

It's so weird that there are bugs but people experience different flavors of bugs ;-)

What you describe above has never happened to me. When the Opening in X feet countdown dialog appears (whether coming home or - on the rare-ish cases it works when leaving) and the chime goes off, it always opens (or closes, as needed) the garage door for me properly.

In fact, I'll say that the Tesla HomeLink seems stronger than any other (Homelink) car I've had - or even the factory remote. With the Tesla, i can open the garage door at a range further than previous (or current other) cars or the factory remote. With line of sight, I can reliably open it at about 40' or so with no problem. I'm in a tight-ish cul de sac so it's awkward to test it much further than that, but I suspect I might be able to back up even a bit further.

My only problem is the auto-close "countdown" more times than not fails to display.

HomeLink functionality, reliability, and then the auto close/open on top of that...seems everyone has different experiences!

 

[CameronB]

Tesla HomeLink seems like a Magic 8 ball...

Driver #1: "Will it manually open?"
Magic 8-ball/HomeLink: "It is certain"

Driver #2: "Will it manually open?"
Magic 8-ball/HomeLink: "Reply hazy. Try again"

Driver #3: "Will Auto-Open work?"
Magic 8-ball/HomeLink: "Yes, Definitely"

Driver #4: "Will Auto-Open work?"
Magic 8-ball/HomeLink: "Outlook not so good"

Driver #5: "Will Auto-Close work?"
Magic 8-ball/HomeLink: "Most likely"

Driver #6: "Will Auto-Close work?"
Magic 8-ball/HomeLink: "My reply is no"

 

[CameronB]

Just an update here. On Wed evening I got the 2017.42.a update. For me, it hasn’t changed anything to improve homelink auto close in the first 36 hours of use. Same as before for me...auto open continues to work 100% of the time but auto-close when backing out of my garage is still hit and miss (works 30% of the time, have to manually close door 70% of the time). Bummer.

OK...I need to walk my previous statement back just a bit. I hadn't given 2017.42.a enough tries (maybe 4 or 5 of which it worked 1 or 2 times) when I wrote this. Now having had that software version for almost a week, I think I can say it has improved the reliability of auto-close when leaving my garage. It's not 100% like auto-open is, but it is improved from the ~30% of the time it was under 2017.40.x.

I'd say after almost a week with 2017.42.a, auto-close works about 50-60% of the time. So, it's still a coin toss every morning, but it is better than the 30% previously by a now-noticeable margin.

 

[lennieorr]

Also, got the another update last week. Homeland started working again. Auto close is still hit or miss but auto open and using it manually now works.

 

[KidDoc]

I back into my garage, my driveway is a bit over 2 car lengths long, and homelink has a really hard time figuring out when to fire for both leaving and coming home. I back my car up to the garage door and set the location but it seems to be a good 40-50 ft off when I come home. Really weird. I wish homelink would fire out of the rear of the car since the charge port is in the rear and I'm sure I'm not the only one that prefers to back into the garage.

I'll play around with it some tomorrow to see if I can get a way for it to work. Too busy with work & Halloween today.

 

[Impala1ss]

I envy those of you whose "Homelink" works even just "only once in a while." Mine has never worked at all. After the last update I was hoping that it would finally work but no luck. Whenever I get to the Service Center I will ask them about it but until then I'll just use the remote that came with the opener. My Volt works the garage door just fine and from a long distance but the Tesla? SIGH!

 

[KidDoc]

Just a quick note - my homelink manual button works pretty good just needs more range. The automatic feature is very very iffy.

 

[StefanSarzio]

I back into my garage, too. Range works fine for me.

 

[originalsalt]

My garage openers stopped working after multiple attempts to "Program" Homelink after the Tesla update in early October. I have a Chainlink garage door system and even after a battery change, the Chainlink garage door openers don't work all due to this Homelink issue I believe.

Has anyone had this issue?

 

[Ken7]

I've had my car about 4 weeks and yesterday was the first Home Link failure I've experienced. I have the .42 update and have had that for over a week with no issues. When I approached the front gate to our condo yesterday, the chime sounded but the gate never opened. Upon closer inspection, I could see the radio wave icon never showed up and manually pressing the opener icon did nothing. I backed out and went to the visitors entrance where I was let in. When I reached my garage within the condo, the same thing happened, a chime, but no opening command and no radio wave icon.

I played around with it last night and couldn't get it to work until I rebooted the main screen. Once I did that all was normal and was still OK today. I don't know if it's release to the .42 update, but as I said, I've had that for over a week.

 

[artsci]

I’ve set up Homelink to change the camera from rear to front when I approach my parking space at home. When I’m within 25’ of the space the touchcreen view switches to the front camera so I can park without fear of hitting the curb with the front bumper. If I back in (which I do most of the time when I need to charge), the view autoimaticllly switches to the rear camera when I put the car in reverse.