Commercial environments often have multiple garage doors, spread throughout a facility. The status and history of each door (is it open? When was it opened? Who opened it?) can be difficult to track and introduces uncertainty regarding the state of the facilities and can expose the business to security issues. Sometimes a company knows more about the state of its website than it does the state of its garage doors.
If you are a garage door business working with these companies, it’s a great idea to bring the right combination of hardware and software to solve these problems, reducing pain points for your customers in a cost-effective manner while providing opportunities to grow your business. Let’s look at remote monitoring and control of commercial garage doors and see how it can help you and your customers.
Leverage Current Commercial Operators
For many businesses, there is no need to swap out existing hardware to get remote capabilities. A properly installed and configured WiFi board can be added to an existing Genie or Overhead Door commercial operator, “cutting the cord” and making the commercial operator available remotely without replacing the investment the business has already made.
Access to Information from Almost Anywhere
Once the new WiFi board is installed and configured, data is available via an app on the manager’s smartphone—Android and iPhone—and, as long as they can access the internet, they’ll have their finger on the pulse of their garage doors. The app can also notify the managers when, for example, a door has been opened, is open for a long time, or has been opened at an odd hour.
Reports are also available, letting the manager access the history for each opener.
Control Doors from A Smartphone
In addition to knowing the status of doors, managers can take control, if needed, from their app. They can open or close doors remotely, give temporary access to others in case of an emergency, or reach out to technical support if there are issues with the operator.
Rules can also be set for doors to automatically close after a certain amount of time being open or for all open doors to close at a certain time of day.
To help ensure doors operate safely, all monitored and non-monitored safety devices must be clear of obstructions for the door to close properly. The manager receives a door alert in the app and the door will stop and reverse just as it would in normal operation if any interference to the safety devices is detected.
Promising Installation Opportunities
Remote monitoring and control of commercial doors makes a lot of sense for many businesses, and it can be a worthwhile effort for installers, as well. Each commercial operator on site will need to have a WiFi retrofit kit board installed, and each board requires some on-board configuration to function properly.
Fortunately, each WiFi retrofit kit board can be installed into a commercial operator and configured in minutes… meaning your team can upgrade several—or even dozens—of commercial doors relatively quickly and easily.
What’s Next?
OHD Parts has WiFi retrofit kits that provide a simple, enhanced commercial garage door experience for your customers, giving you another way to add value for your customers while growing your business. Check them out here.