Get Yourself a High-Tech Garage

Essential but utilitarian, the garage is oft-negelcted when it comes to adding intelligence to the home.

No longer—we’ve identified some simple ways to add smarts to your house’s overlooked entryway.

Chamberlain B970

The easiest way to smarten your garage is to add a device which will begin paying dividends immediately—a smart garage door opener. The Chamberlain B970 is not only a garage door opener of solid construction, consistency and safety, but the gadget is WiFi-enabled and equipped with MyQ technology, which allows users to control their door with their smartphone—among a number of other nifty features. Some others: Checking on your garage door’s status from anywhere in the world and receiving alerts whenever the door opens or closes. The B970 works with a number of third-party smart platforms, including Apple Homekit, Google Assistant, Wink, Nest, SmartThings and more. With this plethora of pairings, Chamberlain users can exert control over large swaths of their smart home simply by opening their garage—like switching on the lights, setting the temperature, or turning on the radio for a seamless auto-to-abode audio transition.

The Chamberlain B970 is available for $269. Certain third-party pairings may require a MyQ Home Bridge ($69) or a MyQ subscription plan ($1/month, $10/year).

Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link

You probably won’t find a better all-in-one tool for your car-storage-cum-man-cave than the Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link. In addition to automatically monitoring—and purifying—air quality in your most exhaust-adjacent room, the Hot+Cool Link can warm up your garage on those winter mornings when the trek to the car can seem like a journey across the Arctic. Better still, it can perform all these functions automatically, by schedule or on demand, via smartphone or voice command.

The Dyson Pure Hot+Cool Link is available for $619.

CeilingLift

Many garages perform dual functions. While primarily a means to keep vehicles safe and secure, the garage often also serves as a storage solution for various miscellany, which, for whatever reason, can’t find a home in the house proper. The CeilingLift by StorageMotion takes advantage of high garage ceilings to allow users to maintain a clean and clear car parking area, while not compromising the room’s storage capacity. The retractable cabinet, which requires no wall space, descends from a ceiling-affixed enclosure to eye-level at the push of a button, offering owners access to those home goods that have been banished to the garage—and returns out-of-sight and above head just as easily.

Contact StorageMotion for customized specifications and pricing.

Automatic

We couldn’t cover smart garages without offering one intelligent gadget for the garage’s primary resident: Your car. Automatic is a dashboard-connected device with accompanying app that will keep you in tune with your car’s health. In addition to tracking all your auto’s stats and vitals, Automatic will decode mysteries on demand. Obscure emergency light comes on? Automatic will explain exactly what it means and whether you need to head to the shop or just inflate a rear tire. Better still, Automatic pairs with innumerable other apps via If This, Then That (IFTTT), allowing you to, among other things, turn your car into something of a smart home remote. Have your garage door automatically open upon approach, for example, which in turn switches on your lights, and sets the ideal home temperature, and turns on the basketball game, and so on and so forth in our wonderful interconnected Internet of Things future.

Automatic Lite ($79) is currently sold out, but the more feature-full Automatic Pro is available for $129.