App restrictions for location
When I was going through the app setup, one of the steps was to determine the location, by slowly walking toward the garage for 10 seconds. This step was where things almost broke down.
Personally, I don't really care to have the garage open / close depending on my location, but the app forces you to complete this step. I had to try several times to get it to detect my location, and it only finally worked when I was just standing still, not moving toward my garage like the instructions say.
It would be much more user friendly if the geolocation was optional, or at least have a manual option. I was hoping to just be able to input my address or bypass the step altogether.
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Official comment
Thank you for the suggestion Brian. Yes, the app can be a bit picky for setting up location because it requires an accurate GPS signal - not just any GPS signal. Mapping apps will accept a GPS signal that could be off by 100 feet and still show your rough location. For learning the garage location, the Tailwind app will require that your phone's GPS really dials in the accuracy. This can take some time depending on conditions.
Also, we can't really allow users to enter their address manually to get the location because the app really needs to know the GPS coordinates of the garage. For example, on a larger property the garage could be hundreds of feet away from the GPS coordinates where the Google database says that address is. This would result in really bad user experiences.
I do like the idea of simply bypassing the whole geolocation though. I'll ask them team if that's feasible - to turn off everything location related. It could take some serious code changes though as many parts of the code involve location services.
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Has this issue been fixed? I just bought the tailwind garage door opener and I am this close to returning it because I cannot register and use the device without telling it where my address is. I dont need the auto drive up open feature. I just need to be able to open and close my garage remotely and have some automation integration with the sensor. If I cannot even use the app and device to do a basic thing, then that's too bad. On top of this, the learn address button does not seem to activate for me. I would have been happy to give it my legs and move on but even that is not working.
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Sorry you had difficulty setting up the device.
Shortly we will be releasing an app update that allows you to manually enter your address as well. We expect to have the Android version out in about a week, and the iOS version will follow shortly thereafter.
Currently you need to allow the system to learn the location of the device. The location enables other features in addition to the auto-open / close, such as what time zone it is in for example. If you don't want the Tailwind app to track your location that's not a problem. You can simply set location permission to never / not allowed immediately after setting up the system. If your concern is that your address would be stored in the system I'm sorry about that. Currently the device location is a requirement so that the device at least knows what time zone it is operating in. This is required for time of day features such as Night Mode.
If the app is giving you the error that it cannot get a good GPS signal, please try turning the location services off and then back on in your phone settings. We've noticed that sometimes phones just don't report location with good accuracy and cycling the location feature on / off in phone settings can reset it and then suddenly it snaps in the location with great accuracy.
You can also use a 3rd party GPS app like GPS Tools to check the accuracy. Our next app update will have the GPS accuracy shown right on the setup screen so you can see it real-time to know if that's the issue.
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