For a while now, Overhead Door has offered customers a way to change their garage doors into smart garage doors, but it required buying and adding a separate module to their existing system, called OHD Anywhere. With its new Legacy door, that ability becomes a feature of the system, not an add-on.
The system itself, says project manager Joshua Funk, is not the only one in the industry, nor was it the first, but he fancies it “the best,” or at least portions of it—like the ability to set up rules for the door.
A rule is something like: If the garage door is open past midnight, shut it. “The OHD Anywhere will realize the time and shut the door,” Funk explains. Really, it’s the ability for homeowners to set up custom safeguards against their worst habits. “If you want your door to close if it’s left open for more than an hour, you can.”
Funk and Overhead believe its rule features gives them a leg up over the competition, but their new door is stocked with plenty of other impressive features as well. For one, owners can control their door, and check whether its open or not, via both the door’s smart opener and their smartphone (although you need WiFi to use the opener at a distance, while a smartphone can rely on data). Another thing, owners have the ability to: 1. Assign user access to 19 individuals (20 including themselves); and 2. In a pinch, assign virtual keys to friends, family, neighbors, or whoever might need immediate access but aren’t verified users.
We should also note the door’s tracking feature, which allows the owner to not only monitor how often the door is being opened and closed, but also when. “If you have something stolen out of your garage, you can help narrow down, and maybe even figure out, what time the crime actually took place.”
Finally, and perhaps the door’s most appealing feature, at least to the professionals installing it, is its ease of setup, which only takes about 10 minutes (five, after the installer gets the hang of it, says Funk). “The app itself walks you through the process. We’ve modeled it off other smart home devices,” he says. “We’ve automated as much of the process as we can. The app walks you through the rest.”