Automatic garage door openers are used to open and close garage doors. Special safety switches are used in garage door openers to prevent a garage door from closing if the safety switch is triggered. The triggering of a safety switch will cause a closing garage door to fully open, which may result in an open garage door, when the user had thought it was closed. At other times, the user may drive away from a garage door and forget to close it. An open garage door invites theft of items in the garage, and possibly items within the house, and also presents a danger to those remaining in the house.
When a vehicle is in the garage, it is not desirable to have an alarm indicate that the garage door is open, otherwise the user might manually switch off the alarm, or ignore it. Switching off the alarm or ignoring it, will make the user less likely to use the alarm, when the user needs it, such as when the user is driving away and the garage door remains open.
Such alarms are not desirable or useful as long distance alarms, since the user may not desire to know that the garage door is open when the user is a long distance away, since the user would not be able to close the garage door at such a distance. In addition, long distance signals require more power, crowd the bandwidth, and require additional licenses.