4 ms·

Smart garage door controller is no longer smart

11 points by mortenjorck 3y ago

fatnoah 3y ago
> The MyQ was the first connected garage door controller on the market. It launched in 2011 to solve problems like being halfway to the airport to start a two-week holiday and having to turn around because you can’t remember if you shut the garage door. Chamberlain would have a leg to stand on here, however weak, if their stuff even worked. I have two MyQ enabled openers, and due to their location under the bedroom with my "networking closet", they're mere feet from the access point. In the 5 years of owning the openers, I've successfully received a "door open alert" twice and have successfully used the app to operate the doors exactly once. Once, while on vacation, a neighbor called to say that our door had been open for two straight days and asked if I wanted them to close the door for me. I said yes and they closed the door. Within seconds I received one of the two aforementioned notifications. And for control via the app? Forget it. The connection actually working between my app and the device so rarely works, I stopped trying years ago and went through the (very nontrivial) effort to get it connected to the built-in opener in my car. My humble opinion for Chamberlain is to either let third parties build stuff that actually works, or remove the functionality entirely.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  MyQ exists for Chamberlain to generate partner revenue with the side effect of providing the garage opener owner some value with regards to door status and motion control.
paradox460 3y ago
I have a dumb door opener. I smartened it with a tailwind, which is a small box that plugs into your opener, has a sensor on the door itself, and sits happily on your wifi. It has pretty good integrations, and you can get it working locally with homeassistant fairly well https://gotailwind.com/ https://gotailwind.com/
- serf 3y ago
  for the adventurous an ESP32 or ESP8266 is a very cheap way to accomplish something similar.
myrandomcomment 3y ago
Glad I saw this. I was about to buy 3 of them. Not anymore.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
More discussion ended up over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186303

11 points by mortenjorck 3y ago

> The MyQ was the first connected garage door controller on the market. It launched in 2011 to solve problems like being halfway to the airport to start a two-week holiday and having to turn around because you can’t remember if you shut the garage door. Chamberlain would have a leg to stand on here, however weak, if their stuff even worked. I have two MyQ enabled openers, and due to their location under the bedroom with my "networking closet", they're mere feet from the access point. In the 5 years of owning the openers, I've successfully received a "door open alert" twice and have successfully used the app to operate the doors exactly once. Once, while on vacation, a neighbor called to say that our door had been open for two straight days and asked if I wanted them to close the door for me. I said yes and they closed the door. Within seconds I received one of the two aforementioned notifications. And for control via the app? Forget it. The connection actually working between my app and the device so rarely works, I stopped trying years ago and went through the (very nontrivial) effort to get it connected to the built-in opener in my car. My humble opinion for Chamberlain is to either let third parties build stuff that actually works, or remove the functionality entirely.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
MyQ exists for Chamberlain to generate partner revenue with the side effect of providing the garage opener owner some value with regards to door status and motion control.

paradox460 3y ago

I have a dumb door opener. I smartened it with a tailwind, which is a small box that plugs into your opener, has a sensor on the door itself, and sits happily on your wifi. It has pretty good integrations, and you can get it working locally with homeassistant fairly well https://gotailwind.com/ https://gotailwind.com/

serf 3y ago
for the adventurous an ESP32 or ESP8266 is a very cheap way to accomplish something similar.

myrandomcomment 3y ago

Glad I saw this. I was about to buy 3 of them. Not anymore.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

More discussion ended up over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186303 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38186303