Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My garage is across the road from my house and using a garage door remote from my house was spotty, at best; sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t. So I wanted something with greater range. Since my router’s range included the garage I decided to use wi-fi to activate the doors and Gogogate2 as the instrument. The Gogogate2 item works as advertised; it will open and close your garage doors using an app for your iphone and after about a week of use, seems to do it reliably. However, getting to that point was somewhat of a challenge. The unit arrives with everything necessary to operate 3 doors, including one sensor to indicate a door’s position. Included is a booklet style setup guide, perhaps 3”x3” with about 10 pages devoted to actual setup. I found this documentation to be woefully inadequate. Instead of having step-by-step instructions with different scenarios covered as you went along it was sort of nebulous in places with statements like “…fill all the fields in a 3 simple steps process.” You have 2 choices to do the setup; you can use your phone or your PC. I tried with the phone first and it failed so setup was done with my computer. I don’t understand why manufacturers skimp on documentation. I have never heard of anyone complaining because there was too much information and it cost next to nothing to have more; so why not cover the possibilities one might run into? So what was missing from the guide? Well, the unit comes to you with 10 electrical ports. Six are used for the garage doors and a 6-pole plug attaches to these. There is also a 4-pole plug included but the booklet does not indicate what this is for. I thought it might be used for a camera connection because the website indicates you can connect a camera, but a camera connection was not addressed either. I later found a download document on their website that indicated the plug is used for a gate installation. Another problem involved the password I used during setup. When I tried to add another user it asked for a numeric password. It wasn’t mentioned during setup that the password needed to be numeric and changing it was not without its own challenges. The booklet does not cover the use of Gogogate2 in a network using MAC address filtering which is a common feature on routers today. If you use MAC filtering (I do) you will need the MAC address of the wi-fi adapter in the unit. I could not find this on the device or anywhere in the package. Fortunately, I have a utility which shows me all wi-fi devices within the router’s range and gives me their MAC address so I was able to input the address into my router’s settings. This utility is not something the average computer user has. Every item using a wi-fi adapter should have the adapter’s MAC address printed on it somewhere. The unit itself appears well made and functions as intended most of the time. Occasionally, the wi-fi connection fails if the application is up on the phone for more than a couple of minutes. My feeling is that this should not happen. In operation, there are warnings that a door has been activated; a light flashes and a tone sounds about 10 times. If the door has a sensor the application will indicate the door’s position, open or closed. With no sensor the door will always appear open in the application. Gogogate2 mounting is achieved using about a 1”x3” piece of 2-sided tape on the rear of the device. I believe this should be improved upon. I question how well this would stick to unpainted sheetrock or a wooden surface. I screwed a piece of Lexan to the wall and stuck the unit to that. Of course, the other problem with this mounting system is that it’s a 1-time affair. Should you need to remove it for any reason you will need to improvise to re-attach it. I should also mention that if you use a sensor it reports a temperature in the application. Mine reads approximately 10 degrees F. too low consistently. I don’t use this so it matters not to me. So the Gogogate2 works as advertised, usually, but setup was not seamless, the documentation was inadequate, and the mounting system seemed like a cost-saving afterthought. For these reasons and the missing MAC address I give it 3 stars. Update 1-27-16 - The unit quit working after less than 2 months. It showed up on the phone but the doors wouldn't work. Ended up having to push the reset button on the unit and setting it up from scratch all over again. I will let you know if it quits again. Update 10-7-16 - The unit has worked flawlessly since January and they have improved the app so I'm increasing my rating from 3 stars to 4. Update 11-10-17 - The system has worked flawlessly since that hiccup in Jan. of '16. We just went through a 1-week power outage and it had no impact on the Gogogate.