Seriously, I wasn't even through the second paragraph before I thought the same thing - just take the thing with you. It doesn't try to solve the OCD, but it solves the problem.
Nobody in my household has OCD, but we had a garage door that sometimes, unpredictably, would decide that there was an obstruction at the very bottom, and go back up. Did you really, really watch it go all the way down before driving off? Did you?
Engineer's solution rather than psychiatrist's - simply rig something that lets you check over the internet and close the door (but not open it!) if necessary. I've since debugged the garage door too.
I had a gather like that, for like half an hour the sun would shine on the sensor and it wouldn't close. Fixed with a toilet paper role over the sensor to avoid the glare. In my current house I have homeassistant and a sensor so I can check if it's closed/auto close after ~10 minutes (I'd set it to 5 but that was too aggressive).
In my case the rails were misadjusted so the door would contact the frame before it was all the way down. The friction would sometimes, just sometimes, trigger the overtorque sensor, but only when the door was about an inch or two from the bottom. Fixed by adjusting the rails.
I had a garage door problem with the sun too. I tried the toilet paper roll trick, but it was only partially effective. Finally had to replace the sensor.
> Engineer's solution rather than psychiatrist's - simply rig something that lets you check over the internet and close the door (but not open it!) if necessary.
Wouldn't necessarily work for OCD, as the obsession can easily morph into "Did the sensor fail?" I can see it being helpful though.
Live feed camera with a timestamp turned on then? :) Could double as a security cam for the car when it's in the garage...
The real fun one is if you need to stare at the latch as well, just in case it looked closed, but wasn't...
That said, this particular story has been repeated a bunch, or at least I've heard it before but I can't quite remember where. I'd be interested if anyone's found a proper source for it, but not quite interested enough to go hunting myself. :)
I think a lot of smart home gadgets are stupid, but we had to get a new garage door opener and all the decent ones are smart. It's amazing. My opener sends me a notif on my phone if it's been open for 10 mins and I can close it remotely.
I've been looking at circuit breaker level power monitors, and one of uses that seems interesting is the ability to see if your oven is drawing power. Some systems allow you to enable geofencing and trigger a push notification if your phone leaves the home wifi range wile the oven is on.
Same here. The solution was immediately obvious. I'm amazed that she actually got as far as talking to a psychiatrist, unless I suppose she was so ashamed of the problem that she had never told anyone about it before.
Nobody in my household has OCD, but we had a garage door that sometimes, unpredictably, would decide that there was an obstruction at the very bottom, and go back up. Did you really, really watch it go all the way down before driving off? Did you?
Engineer's solution rather than psychiatrist's - simply rig something that lets you check over the internet and close the door (but not open it!) if necessary. I've since debugged the garage door too.