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Partially responsible for this. (Sold Lockitron to Chamberlain in 2017 which became the basis for Amazon Key integrations.) Contrary to the popular sentiment i

Partially responsible for this. (Sold Lockitron to Chamberlain in 2017 which became the basis for Amazon Key integrations.) Contrary to the popular sentiment in a lot of the comments here, there’s not much value in the analytics. As we all painfully found out in the 2010’s, there are only two viable recurring revenue streams in the IoT space - charging for video storage and charging for commercial access. Chamberlain does both with the MyQ cameras and with the garage access program to partners like Amazon and Walmart. Both retailers have a fraud problem (discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38176891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38176891). “In garage delivery” promises dropping delivery fraud to zero - ie users falsely claiming package theft. That solution is worth millions to retailers, naturally Chamberlain would like a cut but only if they can successfully defend that chokepoint. For historical reasons having to do with the security of three or four generations of wireless protocols used in garage doors they can’t (and products like ratgdo and OpenSesame exploit this.) Other industries such as automotive have a more secure chain of control over their encryption keys so one has to (for instance) go to the dealer to buy a replacement key fob for your Tesla for $300 and not eBay for $5. Given the turnover in leadership there I’m not surprised the new guy needs to put their hand on the plate to see it’s hot, but there’s a reason this wasn’t implemented before and it wasn’t because of lack of discussion. I can see the temptation in going for monetization given their market share but I think this approach was ill conceived rather than fix foundational issues which would allow home users to integrate with 3rd party services and still charge industry partners for reducing incidences of fraud.

whoopdedo 3y ago
A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house, or the driver simply takes it with them after posting the porch picture. And I've seen boxes arrive that were forced open and the contents pulled out. But sure, it's the customers who are untrustworthy not the delivery people.
- traviswingo 3y ago
  True. Delivery drivers consistently deliver to my neighbor instead of myself. The last three digits of our addresses are 885 and 855, and they consistently confuse the two. They’re tired, overworked, underpaid, and I honestly don’t blame them. But I wouldn’t trust anyone in my garage/home when I’m not home. Not sure why these companies think that will actually work.
  - dboreham 3y ago
    In US homes the garage is often a way to access the house with minimal security between the two.
    - fnordpiglet 3y ago
      That’s not true, the garage typically has a full outdoor door with standard security (dead bolts, wired into the security system) the same as any other door as the interface door between the garage and the house. This is a code thing for a variety of reasons but primarily because the outdoor door is weatherized and provides a barrier against CO, but also for the precise reason that the garage door is not considered secure. The protocols for opening the door wirelessly are known insecure and municipalities have required outdoor doors at the interface due to the number of home invasions and burglaries through the garage.
      - rurp 3y ago
        At least in my experience people are a lot more likely to leave the garage door unlocked than the front door, either intentionally or unintentionally.
        abustamam 3y ago
        Agreed. Our garages have always had three entries: one from the house, one via garage door, and a side door. Side door was always locked, garage door always closed (never locked though), and the door between house and garage not only almost never locked, but often flat out open because that's where we put the litter box.
- smt88 3y ago
  > A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Same, but this is irrelevant to the point GP was making. Some minority of people do want Amazon Key (and similar services), and those people are now unable to claim their package wasn't delivered once they sign up for the service. Add those people up and you have something worth millions, even if there aren't many of them.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    I live in a townhouse and I _love_ the Key deliveries into my garage. I've been using it since it was a closed beta, and I haven't had a problem with it. It provides a convenient service for both parties.
  - 3guk 3y ago
    I fully suspect though that the people who do want Amazon Key and the people who are happily defrauding Amazon are not one and the same. I realise that there are the porch pirates who are another issue entirely!
- cyberax 3y ago
  > A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house It doesn't work like this. Delivery workers use an app that opens the door, so if they are at a wrong location, it will be immediately apparent.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Subject to location service accuracy, which as we know, is ±1m... in movies, ±10m in reality... except more often it's ±50m or worse, because who knows why.
    - efitz 3y ago
      Not at all. Since the app is linked to a system that opens your specific garage door, it will be obvious because they push the button and the door in front of them does not open.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - cyberax 3y ago
      This can happen. A delivery person comes to a door, presses the button in their app, and nothing happens. So it's immediately obvious that they are at a wrong location. And they know that they can't just leave the package there, they have to find the correct door. And there's a flow in the Amazon delivery app to mark an incorrect geolocation, so they won't be penalized for taking longer time. The app also has pictures of the location in question, to minimize the confusion. From the homeowner's side, the garage door will be open for half a minute or so with nobody nearby. It's possible for a burglar to use this time to quickly run inside. But the probability of that is pretty low, and there'll be a camera recording of that.
      - flutas 3y ago
        > And they know that they can't just leave the package there, they have to find the correct door. Except that's not true at all. Amazon had my new house geolocated wrong (think robin instead of arden st in their system, even though I put the address in correct and it read back correct). First delivery came, "delivered", not at my door... Contact CS, get a refund, continue. "Ok, I'll setup key so they know it's wrong and deliver it in my garage." Pieced together from video: Second delivery arrives at wrong location, garage door opens...and was never closed. "delivered" Took me contacting CS 5 times, with 5 failed deliveries, and doing an email bomb to get them to update my geo-location. Turned out it was literally across the fucking city, ~8 miles away.
- codeTired 3y ago
  Have you seen Walmart advertising delivery to your refrigerator? Absolute insanity.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    Actually, this would be cool for say a fridge in a mudroom...
    - function_seven 3y ago
      What's old is new again! https://www.core77.com/posts/103681/When-Houses-Had-Built-In-Milk-Doors https://www.core77.com/posts/103681/When-Houses-Had-Built-In...
      - 20after4 3y ago
        This is infinitely more sensible than some crazy internet connected garage door opener scheme. Somehow I think it's far to sensible for modern culture though. Everyone's lost their minds.
- jkestner 3y ago
  Let Amazon sell you a garagecam that they can feed into their driver surveillance system.
beeboobaa 3y ago
Why would any of those monetization strategies require fucking over your customers like this? How are they incompatible?
- efitz 3y ago
  They are afraid a potential partner will use the automation meant for customers. This is just more enshittification in order to exploit revenue channels other than direct sales.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    > They are afraid a potential partner will use the automation meant for customers. But isn't the door property of the customer? In this case it is perfectly the customer's choice and right if they want to use the customer-facing API to let a delivery company in.
    - paledot 3y ago
      > But isn't the door property of the customer? Not anymore. Now I get to pay $5/mo for IFTTT integration, after paying the premium for the WiFi-enabled version of the same device.
- epcoa 3y ago
  Who here claimed it was, they literally said it was “ill conceived”
excitom 3y ago
This is what I love hacker news, a comment from an actual subject matter expert.
tech_ken 3y ago
So you're saying that retailers will pay Chamberlain to act as more or less a clearinghouse for package deliveries in my garage, and that in order to successfully operate this model Chamberlain needs to funnel all users through their proprietary channels in order to fully vet the delivery transaction? Or at least to prevent HA users from nibbling at Chamberlain's lunch with DIY equivalents? Do you think that they will pull back from this move given the pushback?
- bluGill 3y ago
  For retailers I want someone to verify that they are legitimate. I don't want random people in my garage. If someone enters my garage when I'm not home they better really be agents for WalMart/Amazon/target/UPS (as opposed to WolMort/Amozan/targit/USP...) , and whatever company does that does background checks on drivers. Probably they also need to have other cameras in their vehicles so that drivers trying to steal whatever valuables I have are not stolen. (as already pointed out, most people have an unlocked door from the garage to the house)
  - kelnos 3y ago
    > as already pointed out, most people have an unlocked door from the garage to the house Not sure where you live, but every house I've lived in (USA, a few different states) during my entire life has had an exterior-quality door with exterior-quality lock, including deadbolt, between the house and garage. In the one house I lived in that had a security system, that garage-to-interior door was also wired into the system and arming it would treat it like an exterior door. Having said that, I still wouldn't want random delivery people entering my garage without my knowledge.
    - abustamam 3y ago
      I think parent comment was saying the door exists, but many people leave it unlocked. I grew up leaving that garage-interior door open because that's where we put the litter box, at several different houses.
cptcobalt 3y ago
I know it's a distraction and orthogonal to your point, but your statement of a "key fob for your Tesla for $300" is fallacious and incorrect. Tesla uses Phone Key with with the Tesla app as your primary method of unlocking the car, with a $20 NFC card as fallback, and the limit of paired phones is above any practical real-world use. If you want a keyfob as a status symbol, it's $175. (Mine is a desk ornament, it doesn't get used.) Swap in a more traditional automaker, and your point remains correct.
- cyberax 3y ago
  > If you want a keyfob as a status symbol, it's $175. (Mine is a desk ornament, it doesn't get used.) The keyfob is super-useful. It fits perfectly into that small jeans pocket (that was originally meant for watches), so you can trigger the trunk/frunk opening without taking the fob (or phone) out.
  - dburkland 3y ago
    You can also trigger those same functions via a smart watch or mobile phone using Siri shortcuts (if you're an iOS user).
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  Yes, I mean surely Chamberlain could maintain a correct and official API endpoint for HomeAssistant users for the kopecks it would cost. It’s all a big money grab. I was burned by this change. I don’t know if anyone at Chamberlain is reading this, but you guys have neighbors, users just wanna keep their home safe. You’re one TikTok away from a crisis when you do stuff that is anti-consumer.
- paulgerhardt 3y ago
  Since you noted it, it’s actually very much part of my point. Tesla engages in price segmentation for replacement key fobs because they have key control. Perhaps even more aggressively than most other automakers short of VW Group. When done well it’s invisible to the user. I suspect by your (polite) comment that you may not be aware that’s going on here. Premium users pay $300 to replace the fob on their Model S / Model X. Mid users pay $175 to replace the fob on the Model 3 / Model Y. And an entry level option exists for the cards. Plus programming fee. Handling fee. Local taxes. Processing fee. Etc :-) Without control of their PKI anyone could self program a replacement for a few dollars as is the case with the garage door market. As an aside, I find the fob useful for booting the car up prior to getting in, rather than waiting 40 seconds before the fly-by-wire shifter starts responding to commands to put it in gear.
jkestner 3y ago
Lockitron! I remember chatting with your engineer about the WiFi radio we used in Twine. Good insight. Ah, chokepoint capitalism. The problem with every company becoming a tech company is that they all expect unsustainable tech company growth. The strip mining of customers is also scaling up, so efficient that industries will destroy themselves. Can't wait until private equity owns the radios in my home, and controls not just the output but inputs.
- immibis 3y ago
  It already does. Have you heard of HDCP?
- paulgerhardt 3y ago
  Twine! You guys single handedly snowballed the Kickstarter revolution! Huge inspiration for us and Pebble in 2012 directly. Your campaign felt like a “butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane” kind of moment. You inspired so many entrepreneurs of that time to take a risk and crowd fund which then inspired another generation. Some of whom ended up huge and going public like Peloton. Regarding choke points - I don’t think they’re all bad. Sometimes certainly, but others it’s a defensible moat that forces an industry to specialize into various key players that serve integral roles. I’m thinking specifically of semiconductors with companies like Western Digital locking up storage, Qualcomm with radios, ARM with compute, Samsung/Hynix with memory, etc This creates a stable enough ecosystem to build various software abstractions on top.
  - jkestner 3y ago
    The stability is nice, agreed, but it's inevitable that monopoly/monopsony gets abused. Samsung/Hynix were part of a price fixing cabal, Qualcomm's IP has been a boot on the neck of innovation, Western Digital has suffered multiple disasters that caused global storage shortages, and ARM is currently flipping the table with its licensing changes. We can have stability with open standards, too. That's cool to hear—I didn't consider we had that influence, though should've realized it after chatting with y'all, Ring/Doorbot, Particle/Spark, Pebble, etc. Guess it took two generations to shake out the hardware startup mistakes. We were early and naïve, but we did ship, and the Twine servers remain up. You learned to focus the use case, and I still haven't. Go figure, I think there's still a space for a general-purpose physical computer, so we're doing it again: https://supermechanical.com/pickup https://supermechanical.com/pickup Funny that Kickstarter's history since is a hindrance, and we might go the Selfstarter route to produce the experience we want next time.
Nextgrid 3y ago
Why should the garage door manufacturer take a cut if a third-party wants to use/access my garage door (which sells for real money and isn't advertised as a rental). If a homeowner wants to let Amazon, Walmart, etc to open their garage door, it should be up to him to provide them with an access token/secret/etc to enter, just like you can put a door keycode in the order notes. The interaction should be purely between him and the retailer and there is absolutely no need for some rent-seeking scum to be involved. The disgusting business model you seem to be justifying is akin to house builders/contractors being perpetually owed a cut every time you invite over a guest into your house or they switch on the lights.
- amluto 3y ago
  I don't actually find this model so disgusting as long as it's implemented in a non-restrictive way. If a garage door manufacturer offers me a (free, local) API to fully control my door and allows me to check a box to let Amazon in, what, exactly, is the problem? Sure, I could also allow Amazon in without checking the box (assuming Amazon offers the appropriate integration and I'm willing to deal with maintaining my side of it), but it also seems okay for Amazon to pay the garage door opener company for the first-party version. Everybody wins. Forcing the actual device owner to use a crappy cloud service is an entirely different story, but it's not required for the Amazon business model. Similarly, many video recording devices support ONVIF and have an optional paid first-party video storage. (And I imagine that quite a few commercial users demand the former -- no one who operates a concierge/security desk or a serious office building or a warehouse or an industrial site has the slightest interest in using four different first-party cloud offerings from four different vendors of their various gizmos that contain cameras. They are going to run one NVR, possibly with off-site backup, with one integrated system for viewing and analyzing the feeds. And they will pay handsomely for that, and they're paying that money to one of several established companies in the space, all of whom require at least token ONVIF or RTSP compliance, and they aren't about to kick any of that money over to the camera makers, because there is no shortage of competing camera makers.)
  - efitz 3y ago
    They are not giving me a free, local API. They are doing everything possible to make the API unusable except by their application, and they are throwing ads all over their app and using dark patterns to hid the open/close buttons until you scroll past the ads.
xxpor 3y ago
If anything, Chamberlain should be paying Amazon for the right to be included with Key. It drives sales to Chamberlain.
- judge2020 3y ago
  Maybe? How many people are switching out their garage door specifically for Key? Every new home I've experienced has no choice for which brand of garage door opener they use, the builder has standardized to a specific brand and often only updates the model whenever forced to.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    I suspect new homes are a only small portion of garage door opener sales.
    - judge2020 3y ago
      What would beat it? Who is buying garage door openers?
      - xxpor 3y ago
        IME, door openers only last 15-20 years, at least in the northern US.
      - kube-system 3y ago
        Garage doors openers have a life of 10-20 years. There are many many millions of existing homes that need new openers every year. Also, openers are also a common up-sale when other components are serviced or replaced. For example, if you get a garage door replaced, the installer will often recommend a new opener at the same time.
      - godelski 3y ago
        Apartments? Businesses? Yeah, Chamberlain only sells garage door openers BUT Chamberlain Group[0] owns Chamberlain, LiftMaster, Merlin, and Grifco (I think they missed a "t" there). Literally the bottom of the Chamberlain website reads > The Chamberlain Group LLC, the corporate parent company to LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin and Grifco, is a global leader in access solutions and products. __We design and engineer residential garage door openers, commercial door operators and gate entry systems.__ [0] https://chamberlaingroup.com/ https://chamberlaingroup.com/
scrps 3y ago
Amazon expects me to weaken my physical security posture to help them defend against an activity I don't engage in and is in no way my responsibility? AND Chamberlain expects me to weaken my digital security posture so they can run some opaque crap on my network¹ that I have very little observability into and even less control over so they can make money? Money is one hell of a drug because they are high. How about amazon builds (at their expense) an amazon controlled box, slap a mcu on, do authentication over nfc, rfid, etc etc. Offer it to customers free of charge, hell throw in a sweetener to get them to adopt. [1] I have a default deny in AND out isolated vlan for crap like this, even if you don't have a network background try to set one up if your networking equipment is capable.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
  They're building and deploying those boxes through the Amazon Hub program. There's no single-family size yet though.
  - barryrandall 3y ago
    That's still an Amazon problem.
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    I think you can do it with Luxor one but similar issues exist (ex oversized packages, large cost and area required)
  - patmorgan23 3y ago
    There are vendors that will sell you a single home package locker. I believe parcel pending is one.
- NavinF 3y ago
  Are you trolling? In-garage delivery is obviously an optional feature and one that usually costs extra (Eg Walmart InHome is $20/mo)
  - 3y ago
dheera 3y ago
I just connected my garage door opener to Home Assistant by taking apart a paired remote and wiring the button to a Zigbee relay. They can't stop me, no part of this is connected to their cloud. In any case, smart home stuff should never rely on the cloud. https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg If you have a Chamberlain garage door opener and looking to connect it to HA you can do this too.
- blitz_skull 3y ago
  This is genius. As someone who is familiar-enough with minor electronics to fuck something up, but not confident enough to look at this photo and go for it—what am I trying to learn here? What are the terms I'm trying to google to figure out how to connect <electronic board> to <electronic board> via <wires>?
  - eichin 3y ago
    One of the articles on this mentioned "ratgdo" as a simple board to do most of the "make a button wirelessly available to homeassistant", I haven't tried it but searching on it gets you a lot of reasonably specific articles and videos.
  - jabroni_salad 3y ago
    The pictured solution is very easy and comes with directions (ratgdo). However, if even that is too much you can make a Switchbot do almost anything. It's just an actuator that pokes buttons and is a premade product with a shell rather than a DIY thingy.
ajross 3y ago
> go to the dealer to buy a replacement key fob for your Tesla for $300 and not eBay for $5. Off topic, but FWIW: Teslas don't in general use fobs (maybe you get one with an S or X?). You can buy one for $175 if you want, but in general the primary unlock mechanism is the app on your phone, with the effective root of trust held in an RFID wallet card (of which you can buy extras for $20 each).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- whelp_24 3y ago
  That's a terrible idea, and it requires you to have both a smart phone and to have it charged and working to get into your own car. An phone crash can leave you stranded.
  - ajross 3y ago
    Or you do what everyone else does and just keep a backup card in your wallet, which you need for valets and repair folks anyway. "Stranded", really?
singleshot_ 3y ago
I am suspicious of the idea that fraud could somehow be reduced by allowing gig workers access to the interior of my home. Somehow this seems an awful lot like a multibillion dollar company offloading work on me.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > Somehow this seems an awful lot like a multibillion dollar company offloading work on me. That's most of the tech industry in a nutshell. From the office suite through all the "self-service" web/mobile interfaces, self-service checkouts in stores, to stuff like this - it's all making you do the work that was previously done by full-time professionals. It's a net loss of efficiency, and it only looks otherwise because salaries of full-time professionals are legible to bean-counters, while the same workload redistributed in tiny bits to masses of people is invisible in balance sheets. In short: I'm starting to believe that most of the "improvements" that came with software are actually just accounting tricks, and this is why actual performance gains don't seem to track expected gains.
  - bumby 3y ago
    >It's a net loss of efficiency Add to it the time lost because software tends to be less reliable than its counterpart because multiple software interfaces tend to increase complexity. There are some things that software is wonderful for improving. But I don’t need a IoT stick of deodorant.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I'd argue the bigger counterweight dragging down expected performance gains is lost agility. The more parties in a system, the more ossified it becomes. (Hello, healthcare) Inevitably, the world changes... and now because there are so many intermediary layers the system as a whole is unable to adapt. Then you're left with a system that can't be changed, that very efficiently does something different than what you need it to do. Or, in a nutshell, most enterprise software older than 5 years.
  - zmgsabst 3y ago
    Have gains not been accounting tricks since the 90s? I would say that almost all of it is, eg, disassembling our manufacturing and shipping it over seas - which ultimately eroded the middle class and jeopardized national security. But neither of those is on the balance sheets of the relevant company. Anti-social short-term metricized business is the ultimate form of Taylorism — and in three generations, we can see that it’s an abysmal failure. Sprinkling math on top doesn’t make reckless greed a good idea.
unlucio 3y ago
So the "excuse" for this is: we couldn't get filthy rich by monetising our customers, so this is the only option? Seriously?
ronnier 3y ago
Tesla doesn’t need a key, you just use your phone. If you do want one, they are $35 for two cards.
gadabout 3y ago
I remember proto-Lockitron when it was a bunch of parts laying around a loft studio off College Ave. Hope you're doing well! -Sam
apple4ever 3y ago
Thanks for Lockitron, I still use it! Probably one of the few. At least Chamberlain has kept it running, which honestly I'm surprised at. I have been looking at other ones, and with this news I think it's time to do that.

whoopdedo 3y ago

A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house, or the driver simply takes it with them after posting the porch picture. And I've seen boxes arrive that were forced open and the contents pulled out. But sure, it's the customers who are untrustworthy not the delivery people.

traviswingo 3y ago
True. Delivery drivers consistently deliver to my neighbor instead of myself. The last three digits of our addresses are 885 and 855, and they consistently confuse the two. They’re tired, overworked, underpaid, and I honestly don’t blame them. But I wouldn’t trust anyone in my garage/home when I’m not home. Not sure why these companies think that will actually work.
- dboreham 3y ago
  In US homes the garage is often a way to access the house with minimal security between the two.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    That’s not true, the garage typically has a full outdoor door with standard security (dead bolts, wired into the security system) the same as any other door as the interface door between the garage and the house. This is a code thing for a variety of reasons but primarily because the outdoor door is weatherized and provides a barrier against CO, but also for the precise reason that the garage door is not considered secure. The protocols for opening the door wirelessly are known insecure and municipalities have required outdoor doors at the interface due to the number of home invasions and burglaries through the garage.
    - rurp 3y ago
      At least in my experience people are a lot more likely to leave the garage door unlocked than the front door, either intentionally or unintentionally.
      - abustamam 3y ago
        Agreed. Our garages have always had three entries: one from the house, one via garage door, and a side door. Side door was always locked, garage door always closed (never locked though), and the door between house and garage not only almost never locked, but often flat out open because that's where we put the litter box.
smt88 3y ago
> A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Same, but this is irrelevant to the point GP was making. Some minority of people do want Amazon Key (and similar services), and those people are now unable to claim their package wasn't delivered once they sign up for the service. Add those people up and you have something worth millions, even if there aren't many of them.
- cyberax 3y ago
  I live in a townhouse and I _love_ the Key deliveries into my garage. I've been using it since it was a closed beta, and I haven't had a problem with it. It provides a convenient service for both parties.
- 3guk 3y ago
  I fully suspect though that the people who do want Amazon Key and the people who are happily defrauding Amazon are not one and the same. I realise that there are the porch pirates who are another issue entirely!
cyberax 3y ago
> A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house It doesn't work like this. Delivery workers use an app that opens the door, so if they are at a wrong location, it will be immediately apparent.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Subject to location service accuracy, which as we know, is ±1m... in movies, ±10m in reality... except more often it's ±50m or worse, because who knows why.
  - efitz 3y ago
    Not at all. Since the app is linked to a system that opens your specific garage door, it will be obvious because they push the button and the door in front of them does not open.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - cyberax 3y ago
    This can happen. A delivery person comes to a door, presses the button in their app, and nothing happens. So it's immediately obvious that they are at a wrong location. And they know that they can't just leave the package there, they have to find the correct door. And there's a flow in the Amazon delivery app to mark an incorrect geolocation, so they won't be penalized for taking longer time. The app also has pictures of the location in question, to minimize the confusion. From the homeowner's side, the garage door will be open for half a minute or so with nobody nearby. It's possible for a burglar to use this time to quickly run inside. But the probability of that is pretty low, and there'll be a camera recording of that.
    - flutas 3y ago
      > And they know that they can't just leave the package there, they have to find the correct door. Except that's not true at all. Amazon had my new house geolocated wrong (think robin instead of arden st in their system, even though I put the address in correct and it read back correct). First delivery came, "delivered", not at my door... Contact CS, get a refund, continue. "Ok, I'll setup key so they know it's wrong and deliver it in my garage." Pieced together from video: Second delivery arrives at wrong location, garage door opens...and was never closed. "delivered" Took me contacting CS 5 times, with 5 failed deliveries, and doing an email bomb to get them to update my geo-location. Turned out it was literally across the fucking city, ~8 miles away.
codeTired 3y ago
Have you seen Walmart advertising delivery to your refrigerator? Absolute insanity.
- dharmab 3y ago
  Actually, this would be cool for say a fridge in a mudroom...
  - function_seven 3y ago
    What's old is new again! https://www.core77.com/posts/103681/When-Houses-Had-Built-In-Milk-Doors https://www.core77.com/posts/103681/When-Houses-Had-Built-In...
    - 20after4 3y ago
      This is infinitely more sensible than some crazy internet connected garage door opener scheme. Somehow I think it's far to sensible for modern culture though. Everyone's lost their minds.
jkestner 3y ago
Let Amazon sell you a garagecam that they can feed into their driver surveillance system.

beeboobaa 3y ago

Why would any of those monetization strategies require fucking over your customers like this? How are they incompatible?

efitz 3y ago
They are afraid a potential partner will use the automation meant for customers. This is just more enshittification in order to exploit revenue channels other than direct sales.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  > They are afraid a potential partner will use the automation meant for customers. But isn't the door property of the customer? In this case it is perfectly the customer's choice and right if they want to use the customer-facing API to let a delivery company in.
  - paledot 3y ago
    > But isn't the door property of the customer? Not anymore. Now I get to pay $5/mo for IFTTT integration, after paying the premium for the WiFi-enabled version of the same device.
epcoa 3y ago
Who here claimed it was, they literally said it was “ill conceived”

excitom 3y ago

This is what I love hacker news, a comment from an actual subject matter expert.

tech_ken 3y ago

So you're saying that retailers will pay Chamberlain to act as more or less a clearinghouse for package deliveries in my garage, and that in order to successfully operate this model Chamberlain needs to funnel all users through their proprietary channels in order to fully vet the delivery transaction? Or at least to prevent HA users from nibbling at Chamberlain's lunch with DIY equivalents? Do you think that they will pull back from this move given the pushback?

bluGill 3y ago
For retailers I want someone to verify that they are legitimate. I don't want random people in my garage. If someone enters my garage when I'm not home they better really be agents for WalMart/Amazon/target/UPS (as opposed to WolMort/Amozan/targit/USP...) , and whatever company does that does background checks on drivers. Probably they also need to have other cameras in their vehicles so that drivers trying to steal whatever valuables I have are not stolen. (as already pointed out, most people have an unlocked door from the garage to the house)
- kelnos 3y ago
  > as already pointed out, most people have an unlocked door from the garage to the house Not sure where you live, but every house I've lived in (USA, a few different states) during my entire life has had an exterior-quality door with exterior-quality lock, including deadbolt, between the house and garage. In the one house I lived in that had a security system, that garage-to-interior door was also wired into the system and arming it would treat it like an exterior door. Having said that, I still wouldn't want random delivery people entering my garage without my knowledge.
  - abustamam 3y ago
    I think parent comment was saying the door exists, but many people leave it unlocked. I grew up leaving that garage-interior door open because that's where we put the litter box, at several different houses.

cptcobalt 3y ago

I know it's a distraction and orthogonal to your point, but your statement of a "key fob for your Tesla for $300" is fallacious and incorrect. Tesla uses Phone Key with with the Tesla app as your primary method of unlocking the car, with a $20 NFC card as fallback, and the limit of paired phones is above any practical real-world use. If you want a keyfob as a status symbol, it's $175. (Mine is a desk ornament, it doesn't get used.) Swap in a more traditional automaker, and your point remains correct.

cyberax 3y ago
> If you want a keyfob as a status symbol, it's $175. (Mine is a desk ornament, it doesn't get used.) The keyfob is super-useful. It fits perfectly into that small jeans pocket (that was originally meant for watches), so you can trigger the trunk/frunk opening without taking the fob (or phone) out.
- dburkland 3y ago
  You can also trigger those same functions via a smart watch or mobile phone using Siri shortcuts (if you're an iOS user).
doctorpangloss 3y ago
Yes, I mean surely Chamberlain could maintain a correct and official API endpoint for HomeAssistant users for the kopecks it would cost. It’s all a big money grab. I was burned by this change. I don’t know if anyone at Chamberlain is reading this, but you guys have neighbors, users just wanna keep their home safe. You’re one TikTok away from a crisis when you do stuff that is anti-consumer.
paulgerhardt 3y ago
Since you noted it, it’s actually very much part of my point. Tesla engages in price segmentation for replacement key fobs because they have key control. Perhaps even more aggressively than most other automakers short of VW Group. When done well it’s invisible to the user. I suspect by your (polite) comment that you may not be aware that’s going on here. Premium users pay $300 to replace the fob on their Model S / Model X. Mid users pay $175 to replace the fob on the Model 3 / Model Y. And an entry level option exists for the cards. Plus programming fee. Handling fee. Local taxes. Processing fee. Etc :-) Without control of their PKI anyone could self program a replacement for a few dollars as is the case with the garage door market. As an aside, I find the fob useful for booting the car up prior to getting in, rather than waiting 40 seconds before the fly-by-wire shifter starts responding to commands to put it in gear.

jkestner 3y ago

Lockitron! I remember chatting with your engineer about the WiFi radio we used in Twine. Good insight. Ah, chokepoint capitalism. The problem with every company becoming a tech company is that they all expect unsustainable tech company growth. The strip mining of customers is also scaling up, so efficient that industries will destroy themselves. Can't wait until private equity owns the radios in my home, and controls not just the output but inputs.

immibis 3y ago
It already does. Have you heard of HDCP?
paulgerhardt 3y ago
Twine! You guys single handedly snowballed the Kickstarter revolution! Huge inspiration for us and Pebble in 2012 directly. Your campaign felt like a “butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane” kind of moment. You inspired so many entrepreneurs of that time to take a risk and crowd fund which then inspired another generation. Some of whom ended up huge and going public like Peloton. Regarding choke points - I don’t think they’re all bad. Sometimes certainly, but others it’s a defensible moat that forces an industry to specialize into various key players that serve integral roles. I’m thinking specifically of semiconductors with companies like Western Digital locking up storage, Qualcomm with radios, ARM with compute, Samsung/Hynix with memory, etc This creates a stable enough ecosystem to build various software abstractions on top.
- jkestner 3y ago
  The stability is nice, agreed, but it's inevitable that monopoly/monopsony gets abused. Samsung/Hynix were part of a price fixing cabal, Qualcomm's IP has been a boot on the neck of innovation, Western Digital has suffered multiple disasters that caused global storage shortages, and ARM is currently flipping the table with its licensing changes. We can have stability with open standards, too. That's cool to hear—I didn't consider we had that influence, though should've realized it after chatting with y'all, Ring/Doorbot, Particle/Spark, Pebble, etc. Guess it took two generations to shake out the hardware startup mistakes. We were early and naïve, but we did ship, and the Twine servers remain up. You learned to focus the use case, and I still haven't. Go figure, I think there's still a space for a general-purpose physical computer, so we're doing it again: https://supermechanical.com/pickup https://supermechanical.com/pickup Funny that Kickstarter's history since is a hindrance, and we might go the Selfstarter route to produce the experience we want next time.

Nextgrid 3y ago

Why should the garage door manufacturer take a cut if a third-party wants to use/access my garage door (which sells for real money and isn't advertised as a rental). If a homeowner wants to let Amazon, Walmart, etc to open their garage door, it should be up to him to provide them with an access token/secret/etc to enter, just like you can put a door keycode in the order notes. The interaction should be purely between him and the retailer and there is absolutely no need for some rent-seeking scum to be involved. The disgusting business model you seem to be justifying is akin to house builders/contractors being perpetually owed a cut every time you invite over a guest into your house or they switch on the lights.

amluto 3y ago
I don't actually find this model so disgusting as long as it's implemented in a non-restrictive way. If a garage door manufacturer offers me a (free, local) API to fully control my door and allows me to check a box to let Amazon in, what, exactly, is the problem? Sure, I could also allow Amazon in without checking the box (assuming Amazon offers the appropriate integration and I'm willing to deal with maintaining my side of it), but it also seems okay for Amazon to pay the garage door opener company for the first-party version. Everybody wins. Forcing the actual device owner to use a crappy cloud service is an entirely different story, but it's not required for the Amazon business model. Similarly, many video recording devices support ONVIF and have an optional paid first-party video storage. (And I imagine that quite a few commercial users demand the former -- no one who operates a concierge/security desk or a serious office building or a warehouse or an industrial site has the slightest interest in using four different first-party cloud offerings from four different vendors of their various gizmos that contain cameras. They are going to run one NVR, possibly with off-site backup, with one integrated system for viewing and analyzing the feeds. And they will pay handsomely for that, and they're paying that money to one of several established companies in the space, all of whom require at least token ONVIF or RTSP compliance, and they aren't about to kick any of that money over to the camera makers, because there is no shortage of competing camera makers.)
- efitz 3y ago
  They are not giving me a free, local API. They are doing everything possible to make the API unusable except by their application, and they are throwing ads all over their app and using dark patterns to hid the open/close buttons until you scroll past the ads.

xxpor 3y ago

If anything, Chamberlain should be paying Amazon for the right to be included with Key. It drives sales to Chamberlain.

judge2020 3y ago
Maybe? How many people are switching out their garage door specifically for Key? Every new home I've experienced has no choice for which brand of garage door opener they use, the builder has standardized to a specific brand and often only updates the model whenever forced to.
- kube-system 3y ago
  I suspect new homes are a only small portion of garage door opener sales.
  - judge2020 3y ago
    What would beat it? Who is buying garage door openers?
    - xxpor 3y ago
      IME, door openers only last 15-20 years, at least in the northern US.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      Garage doors openers have a life of 10-20 years. There are many many millions of existing homes that need new openers every year. Also, openers are also a common up-sale when other components are serviced or replaced. For example, if you get a garage door replaced, the installer will often recommend a new opener at the same time.
    - godelski 3y ago
      Apartments? Businesses? Yeah, Chamberlain only sells garage door openers BUT Chamberlain Group[0] owns Chamberlain, LiftMaster, Merlin, and Grifco (I think they missed a "t" there). Literally the bottom of the Chamberlain website reads > The Chamberlain Group LLC, the corporate parent company to LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Merlin and Grifco, is a global leader in access solutions and products. __We design and engineer residential garage door openers, commercial door operators and gate entry systems.__ [0] https://chamberlaingroup.com/ https://chamberlaingroup.com/

scrps 3y ago

Amazon expects me to weaken my physical security posture to help them defend against an activity I don't engage in and is in no way my responsibility? AND Chamberlain expects me to weaken my digital security posture so they can run some opaque crap on my network¹ that I have very little observability into and even less control over so they can make money? Money is one hell of a drug because they are high. How about amazon builds (at their expense) an amazon controlled box, slap a mcu on, do authentication over nfc, rfid, etc etc. Offer it to customers free of charge, hell throw in a sweetener to get them to adopt. [1] I have a default deny in AND out isolated vlan for crap like this, even if you don't have a network background try to set one up if your networking equipment is capable.

SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
They're building and deploying those boxes through the Amazon Hub program. There's no single-family size yet though.
- barryrandall 3y ago
  That's still an Amazon problem.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  I think you can do it with Luxor one but similar issues exist (ex oversized packages, large cost and area required)
- patmorgan23 3y ago
  There are vendors that will sell you a single home package locker. I believe parcel pending is one.
NavinF 3y ago
Are you trolling? In-garage delivery is obviously an optional feature and one that usually costs extra (Eg Walmart InHome is $20/mo)
- 3y ago

dheera 3y ago

I just connected my garage door opener to Home Assistant by taking apart a paired remote and wiring the button to a Zigbee relay. They can't stop me, no part of this is connected to their cloud. In any case, smart home stuff should never rely on the cloud. https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg If you have a Chamberlain garage door opener and looking to connect it to HA you can do this too.

blitz_skull 3y ago
This is genius. As someone who is familiar-enough with minor electronics to fuck something up, but not confident enough to look at this photo and go for it—what am I trying to learn here? What are the terms I'm trying to google to figure out how to connect <electronic board> to <electronic board> via <wires>?
- eichin 3y ago
  One of the articles on this mentioned "ratgdo" as a simple board to do most of the "make a button wirelessly available to homeassistant", I haven't tried it but searching on it gets you a lot of reasonably specific articles and videos.
- jabroni_salad 3y ago
  The pictured solution is very easy and comes with directions (ratgdo). However, if even that is too much you can make a Switchbot do almost anything. It's just an actuator that pokes buttons and is a premade product with a shell rather than a DIY thingy.

ajross 3y ago

> go to the dealer to buy a replacement key fob for your Tesla for $300 and not eBay for $5. Off topic, but FWIW: Teslas don't in general use fobs (maybe you get one with an S or X?). You can buy one for $175 if you want, but in general the primary unlock mechanism is the app on your phone, with the effective root of trust held in an RFID wallet card (of which you can buy extras for $20 each).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
whelp_24 3y ago
That's a terrible idea, and it requires you to have both a smart phone and to have it charged and working to get into your own car. An phone crash can leave you stranded.
- ajross 3y ago
  Or you do what everyone else does and just keep a backup card in your wallet, which you need for valets and repair folks anyway. "Stranded", really?

singleshot_ 3y ago

I am suspicious of the idea that fraud could somehow be reduced by allowing gig workers access to the interior of my home. Somehow this seems an awful lot like a multibillion dollar company offloading work on me.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> Somehow this seems an awful lot like a multibillion dollar company offloading work on me. That's most of the tech industry in a nutshell. From the office suite through all the "self-service" web/mobile interfaces, self-service checkouts in stores, to stuff like this - it's all making you do the work that was previously done by full-time professionals. It's a net loss of efficiency, and it only looks otherwise because salaries of full-time professionals are legible to bean-counters, while the same workload redistributed in tiny bits to masses of people is invisible in balance sheets. In short: I'm starting to believe that most of the "improvements" that came with software are actually just accounting tricks, and this is why actual performance gains don't seem to track expected gains.
- bumby 3y ago
  >It's a net loss of efficiency Add to it the time lost because software tends to be less reliable than its counterpart because multiple software interfaces tend to increase complexity. There are some things that software is wonderful for improving. But I don’t need a IoT stick of deodorant.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  I'd argue the bigger counterweight dragging down expected performance gains is lost agility. The more parties in a system, the more ossified it becomes. (Hello, healthcare) Inevitably, the world changes... and now because there are so many intermediary layers the system as a whole is unable to adapt. Then you're left with a system that can't be changed, that very efficiently does something different than what you need it to do. Or, in a nutshell, most enterprise software older than 5 years.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  Have gains not been accounting tricks since the 90s? I would say that almost all of it is, eg, disassembling our manufacturing and shipping it over seas - which ultimately eroded the middle class and jeopardized national security. But neither of those is on the balance sheets of the relevant company. Anti-social short-term metricized business is the ultimate form of Taylorism — and in three generations, we can see that it’s an abysmal failure. Sprinkling math on top doesn’t make reckless greed a good idea.

unlucio 3y ago

So the "excuse" for this is: we couldn't get filthy rich by monetising our customers, so this is the only option? Seriously?

ronnier 3y ago

Tesla doesn’t need a key, you just use your phone. If you do want one, they are $35 for two cards.

gadabout 3y ago

I remember proto-Lockitron when it was a bunch of parts laying around a loft studio off College Ave. Hope you're doing well! -Sam

apple4ever 3y ago

Thanks for Lockitron, I still use it! Probably one of the few. At least Chamberlain has kept it running, which honestly I'm surprised at. I have been looking at other ones, and with this news I think it's time to do that.