Chamberlain Shuts Off Access To MyQ's APIs, Breaking Smart Home Integrations (theverge.com) 146
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy reports via The Verge: The Chamberlain Group -- owners of the MyQ smart garage door controller tech -- has announced it's shut off all "unauthorized access" to its APIs. The move breaks the smart home integrations of thousands of users who relied on platforms such as Homebridge and Home Assistant to do things like shut the garage door when they lock their front door or flash a light if they leave their door open for 10 minutes, or whatever other control or automation they wanted to do with the device they bought and paid for.
The move comes a year after Chamberlain discontinued its official Apple HomeKit integration and a few months after it finally killed support for Google Assistant. It's sadly another example of how the company continues to be hostile to the interoperable smart home. Last week, in a blog post, Dan Phillips, chief technology officer of Chamberlain, explained the reasons behind its latest move: "Chamberlain Group recently made the decision to prevent unauthorized usage of our myQ ecosystem through third-party apps. This decision was made so that we can continue to provide the best possible experience for our 10 million+ users, as well as our authorized partners who put their trust in us. We understand that this impacts a small percentage of users, but ultimately this will improve the performance and reliability of myQ, benefiting all of our users." When asked what customers that relied on these now-defunct integrations do, a spokesperson for the company said: "We have a number of authorized partners that we will be happy for people to use," pointing to its partner webpage.
"However, those partners are primarily smart security companies with monthly subscriptions (such as Alarm.com and Vivint) and car manufacturers," notes The Verge. Some alternatives to a MyQ smart garage controller are mentioned in the report, such as Tailwind's $90 iQ3 Pro smart garage controller, Meross' $60 Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener, iSmartgate's $40 iSmartgate Mini, and Ratgdo's $30 Wi-Fi control board.
The moral for smart home users, as summed up by Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen, is: "Buy products that work locally and won't stop functioning when management wants an additional revenue stream."
The move comes a year after Chamberlain discontinued its official Apple HomeKit integration and a few months after it finally killed support for Google Assistant. It's sadly another example of how the company continues to be hostile to the interoperable smart home. Last week, in a blog post, Dan Phillips, chief technology officer of Chamberlain, explained the reasons behind its latest move: "Chamberlain Group recently made the decision to prevent unauthorized usage of our myQ ecosystem through third-party apps. This decision was made so that we can continue to provide the best possible experience for our 10 million+ users, as well as our authorized partners who put their trust in us. We understand that this impacts a small percentage of users, but ultimately this will improve the performance and reliability of myQ, benefiting all of our users." When asked what customers that relied on these now-defunct integrations do, a spokesperson for the company said: "We have a number of authorized partners that we will be happy for people to use," pointing to its partner webpage.
"However, those partners are primarily smart security companies with monthly subscriptions (such as Alarm.com and Vivint) and car manufacturers," notes The Verge. Some alternatives to a MyQ smart garage controller are mentioned in the report, such as Tailwind's $90 iQ3 Pro smart garage controller, Meross' $60 Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener, iSmartgate's $40 iSmartgate Mini, and Ratgdo's $30 Wi-Fi control board.
The moral for smart home users, as summed up by Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen, is: "Buy products that work locally and won't stop functioning when management wants an additional revenue stream."
It never ceases to amaze me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Until they have to defend a thousand implied merchantability suits the abuse will continue.
Re:It never ceases to amaze me (Score:4, Insightful)
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Automation:interior garage door opens -> car door opens -> car seat pressure sensor detects weight = open garage door. car leaves geofence = close garage door. car re-enters geofence = open garage door. weight off car seat = close garage door.
Re:It never ceases to amaze me (Score:4, Interesting)
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You never had to press the button twice on an old-style radio-based garage door remote?
Obviously, you look at the door before driving off to make sure it is closing. Every time. And, yes, the geofence can be sufficiently accurate to tell the difference between in the garage and at the bottom of the driveway.
Re:It never ceases to amaze me (Score:5, Informative)
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That's great as long as the garage door opener has decent safety features, like stopping and backing up a bit when it feels extra resistance.
Unattended operations like that need extra safety measures.
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That's great as long as the garage door opener has decent safety features, like stopping and backing up a bit when it feels extra resistance.
Unattended operations like that need extra safety measures.
Stopping and backing up when the door senses that it has hit something has been required since 1990 in the US and photo eyes (to reverse the door if something breaks the beam while the door is closing) have been required since 1992.
Aaron Z
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Useful - so I am going get in the car. drive to the END of the drive way, stop and wait checking to see if the door is actually going down, and realistically I need to wait until its all the way down because otherwise something might false positive the pressure or laser sensor (like a lead on the wind, I have seen it happen..) and cause the door to go back up.
All to avoid pushing a button as soon as I am clear of the door and being able to confirm the door is nearly closed by the end of the drive way.
My exp
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Obviously, you look at the door before driving off to make sure it is closing. Every time.
The effect of the "smart" devices is to train the user that they don't need to look, because nanny AI takes care of everything.
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I don't know how people deal with all this 'smart' shit which only seems to make very simple tasks more complex and convoluted. Never had a problem with the button on the wall or the car remote.
Agreed. You don't know. But that's an issue with you, not those people.
It's happened a non-zero number of times that I've been doing yard work, going in and out through the garage, and got distracted, leaving the garage door open all night. I'm a nerd... appropriate audience to this site. I've thought about building up a Pi to perhaps take a look at the clock, take a look at the state of the garage door, take a look at recent open/close logs, and go "huh, it's after 11pm, the car's parked, door's been
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And where I am the big risk from leaving the garage door open for a few hours, or even over night or for a 2 or 3 day stretch is wrens setting up nests in there, or wandering animals getting in (have removed armadillos, possums, cats, several species of snakes and I'm sure ignored or never saw various birds, bats, bees, etc and so on)
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remember some things exist for other people
Those people fucking suck and are the only ones ever listen to.
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Naa, AI can do it!
I just asked bing "give me a positive way to say 'product is end of life'". Bing is a capable liar by misdirection!
Re:It never ceases to amaze me (Score:4, Insightful)
I then asked bing for a positive way to say "product is insecure". Quite the eye-opener!
My favorite result: "The product is flexible and adaptable to different security scenarios." I kid you not.
AI is going to really accelerate enshitification, no doubt.
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Anyone can be a dick. Talent involves being able to get away with it.
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I got into a huge argument years back on the Homeassistant forums when homeassistant started banning plugins that did not use official API's. The biggest majority of homeassistant users are using homeassistant exactly because it allows controlling your home devices without having to authenticate to servers that you don't control and ask permission of someone else to control equipment behind your firewall. In my opinion everyone that went with change is getting what they deserve. Cloud controlled devices are
More like... (Score:2)
A$$holes (Score:2)
Re:A$$holes (Score:5, Informative)
It's okay, you can still say "assholes" on Slashdot.
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My uses of the system
Manual [Re:A$$holes] (Score:2)
Re your garage door, you ever heard of the concept of opening and closing it using things called "arms"? You'll find them attached to your torso.
I'm old enough to remember when you had to get out of the car and manually open garage doors because most garages didn't have remote opening. It really sucked when the weather was rotten.
I love the 21st century.
History repeating itself (Score:5, Interesting)
This particular bit of history repeats itself so frequently it's always the present.
Any time you trust a corporation beyond the immediate transaction of the moment, you're putting yourself at their mercy. You care about what you bought, they care about the money you pay. And if it's not a subscription, that was a one-time thing they no longer care about. If it is a subscription, it still isn't enough if they decide they can make more money abandoning a 'service' for something else.
In terms of home automation, once you have it set up you probably expect it to 'just work' for as long as you live there. Years? Decades? You will eventually have things break if they depend on access to someone else's server.
Re:History repeating itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop buying stuff that depends on someone else's server.
Re:History repeating itself (Score:5, Informative)
I wish people would - I'd have to put a LOT less work into building my systems if I didn't have to assume anything that wasn't positively identified as working locally required the ability to call home to work.
Sticking primarily to Zigbee and 433MHz stuff generally isolates you well enough, but there are some things that are mostly only available in WiFi.
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Hopefully the new Matter standard will see most devices on the market start working offline and interoperating, regardless of how long the manufacturer can be bothered to support them for.
Re: History repeating itself (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that many products arenâ(TM)t clearly labelled for this, if at all.
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If everyone returned them, that would solve itself pretty quickly.
The real problem is that these things are pretty easy to install, and the gotcha comes down the line somewhere, so the average person doesn't care until it's too late. It will probably sort itself out eventually, but it's going to require that the zeitgeist get stung a few times.
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Stop buying stuff that depends on someone else's server.
How I get to the internet without depending on someone else's server?
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"Get to the Internet." Good lord Slashdot.
Assuming you mean "open my garage over the Internet", where the problem is connecting to your LAN from the Internet:
1) Don't. Do you really need to open your garage over the internet?
2) Use ssh, https or any of the myriad other protocols available to transfer information over the Internet
2b) Your ISP is probably a dick and doesn't let you do this easily (generally for very good reasons) so you might have to pay for a DDNS service. Lots of these exist. If one shuts d
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Like a Tesla.
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Stop assuming that you don't have to know anything to install the remote home automation stuff. Most people pay someone to install the garage door opener for them, why should the bit that lets you open it using your cell phone from Samarkand be any different?
If you have to be on the LAN to access it, it's no problem. Ikea figured it out.
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How does the cell phone app know my home network address? How does it remain secure?
A reverse proxy would cover both of these and could be done as a fairly simple autosetup if you provide your domain info using LetsEncrypt and certbot.
A Dynamic DNS service would take it a step further. That would require an outside party's server but really no way to avoid that if you don't have a static Internet IP, as you're literally a moving target online at that point. It's worth noting many consumer routers come with a DDNS service from the router OEM, or at least a client you can configure easily.
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The fact that you don't get a static ip, or effectively static through dhcp leasing really annoys me. They basically intentionally break something so they can charge you a fee to get it back. My ISP doesn't do that but man charging you $20 a month for doing effectively nothing just sucks. But that's just another example of how companies will screw you over just to make money.
Re:History repeating itself (Score:5, Informative)
Like SeaFox above me states:
And I'll go a little further:
The solutions are out there. The more we patronise the good guys, then hopefully the more this cloud enabled crap gets relegated to the scrap heap of history.
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It's not yet as easy as it should be. My setup is Home Assistant running on an old HP mini desktop - it can connect directly to any ONVIF-compatible IP camera (more or less all of them). Home assistant also has a DuckDNS plug-in that will auto-configure Let's Encrypt for security. If you don't already run your own web server, it works fairly easily.
You know what? You still have to know how to forward ports on your home router, you're still dependent on DuckDNS, which in turn requires a 3rd party authentic
Chamberlain Sucks... (Score:5, Interesting)
Chamberlain has pretty much all the brands of garage door operators out there. I look forward to when my old LIftmaster dies so I can get a dumb commercial wall-mount opener with exposed up/down/stop controls. One I looked at before even has a 4-20mA positive feedback position indicator output. Easy enough to tie that kind of thing into home automation with proper security.
I have no idea why people think MyQ is a good idea... I get the appeal, but wow what a mess.
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and apparently they invested in IFTTT as well a couple of years back (per https://www.computerworld.com/... [computerworld.com] ), which might be some extra motivation to cut off free API access.
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I have no idea why people think MyQ is a good idea... I get the appeal, but wow what a mess.
I think people simply do not understand what they are getting. Your current-loop interface reference (which is essentially the industrial standard and _very_ reliable and compatible) is probably lost on most people wanting a "smart" home already.
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Well, no. Their major competitor in the US is Sanwa/Overhead Door (Genie).
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
This decision was made so that we can continue to provide the best possible experience for our 10 million+ users...
This decision was made so that we can continue to milk as much money as humanly possible from our 10 million+ users while demonstrating a total lack of regard for them.
On the one hand I feel sorry for the people who are being screwed. On the other hand, I suspect folks savvy enough to use Homebridge and Home Assistant should also have been savvy enough to expect this. It's not like there's a lack of well-publicized precedents.
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Short of building your own garage door opener, there simply ISN’T another option. Chamberlain makes virtually every brand out there.
Not since DeBeers has their been a cartel so in need of dramatic “correction.”
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Home Assistant + Shelly 1 Plus relay. Use the relay purely as a dry-contact relay to trigger the contact loop in every garage door motor. Use the HA app to get full remote access, but none of this uses the cloud.
I know, I know, this counts as "building your own". But honestly it's not that hard.
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You are right, but this solution is not equivalent. It can't tell the door state, nor send events on door state changes.
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ESPHome then. Use any ESP8266 or ESP32 board that has a relay and some sort of input (or build your own), then flash ESPHome into it
It's open source, it runs entirely in your LAN without relying on any cloud, and it does far more than you can do with any other commercial device out there.
I made a controller for my minisplit AC by connecting an IR led, the ouput of the IR receiver, and a Dallas DS18B20 for temperature sensing. ESPHome decodes the IR commands from the remote, and can also command the AC with
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Prolly a few other careers I need to get all of this setup.
Making a smart home yourself is not easy, it is not cheap, it is not pretty, and it not as good as the commercial stuff. I gave up on it and went back to light switches.
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What exactly seems to be the problem of building your own garage door opener? Cheap microelectronics, cheap motors and github is pretty much all that's required for you to roll your own.
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What exactly seems to be the problem of building your own garage door opener?
I dont have the skills to do so and I dont want something that looks like it was hack together by a complete amateur, because that is what it will be.
Easy enough to work around (Score:5, Informative)
If you really want your garage door opener tied into your home automation system, there are all sorts of various smart relay boards available and they're quite inexpensive. I use one of these [amazon.com] with my Tuya home automation setup (but not for a garage door because I still kind of consider that to be a huge security risk, and also because I don't have a garage). You then just connect the relay to, you guessed it, the wires that go to the button which activates the garage door.
As to determining the state of the garage door, there are also smart magnet & reed switch sensors you can install on the door and then you'll be able to tell if activating the opener is going to open a closed door or close an open door. Or you could skip the sensor and just not mess with the door when you aren't actually looking at it, I won't judge.
Re: Easy enough to work around (Score:2)
The inverse of âdonâ(TM)t put electronic sensors and locks on doorsâ(TM) is not secure. And yeah, I will judge you for thinking dumb = inherently more secure.
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Well yeah, anyone who has watched LockPickingLawyer on YT knows that dumb locks are easily defeated too. But it's still not quite as easy as yelling "Alexa, open the garage door!" near a window. Sure, you could do security through obscurity by making the command something less obvious (perhaps "Alexa, shitter's full!"), or by not having a voice command at all, but it's a trade off of security vs convenience.
Furthermore, maybe this is just a Tuya thing, but I've experienced glitches where devices sometimes
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Dude, locks aren't secure either.
And if you happen to live in the US, your bloody walls aren't all that impressive to begin with.
No security measures today that are anywhere near affordable are capable to stop a determined and/or knowledgeable intruder.
The goal is to make it harder. How much harder? Well, that is a nice balancing game of usability, cost and what level of determination and/or skill you want to lock out.
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This used to be true, but it isn’t any longer. Internal security coding within the garage door opener system itself prevents (or at least dramatically complicates) this kind of hacking. Your opener button does not merely close a circuit. It sends a custom code to the opener, just like your wireless remote does.
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Even in that case, there's still a physical button closing a circuit to activate the code exchange and the difficulty basically amounts to having to perform some intermediate level soldering work to attach wires to the leads of the button on the operation device supplied with the opener (or using a spare remote).
I've automated some color changing Christmas lights in exactly the same manner: by soldering wires to the button leads and connecting them to relays controlled by a Raspberry Pi. Where there's a wi
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The recommendation from HomeAssistant and others is to install a "Ratgdo" [github.io] device which converts it from needing cloud access to fully local and taps into the existing sensors and controls. Seems like a good solution given Chamberlain makes most of the garage door openers on the market
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It doesn't work like that with their products; there is no exposed contacts for open/close. Sadly, I have three RF remotes with wires soldered onto the buttons connected to some Shelly relays to "integrate" my existing system to Home Assistant.
Look on the Bright Side (Score:3)
At least Chamberlain isn't requiring you to watch a 60 second advert before you can operate their devices. Not yet anyway - but that would really bump up how much they could charge companies advertising in the app.
Not unexpected (Score:2)
They sell a product at a discounted price to secure subscription fees. People use the API freely provided to get around the subscription fees and then wonder why they get blocked.
I moved away from any home automation product that calls home to an external source for this very reason. I want to be able to connect directly to my devices, not via some internet API that may change at any time at the whim of the provider.
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But the app doesn't require a subscription fee. At best they're showing ads or something. Either way, best to keep it local
I have official myq. It sucks (Score:3)
I've only had it 6 months and several times it has decided to go offline. Sometimes power cycling brings it back. Other times I have to go through the entire setup process from scratch. And for unknown reasons this last time I did full reset it decided that when I open/close the one door it works as expected but when I operate the other door they both open/close at the same time.
When it works, it's nice but it doesn't always work. And that sucks.
Using their API through third party wouldn't fix the core problem that the hardware sucks.
It makes me wonder (Score:2)
"prevent unauthorized usage of our myQ ecosystem through third-party apps"
Usually these kinds of services require authentication with a license key etc, so I'm surprised there were any unauthorized users. Now, if they are cutting off legitimate users of their system who are providing some kind of competition it would be bad. But if they are simply closing some loopholes that were jeopardizing security it is understandable.
I rigged my own dumb garage door opener to be 'smart', it wasn't very hard. There are
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"unauthorized" means "not paying"
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I'm a paying customer. I wish that meant I could retain access to the API. It does not.
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Well, I guess I did believe the lies on the box.
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You're not a paying customer, you're a customer who has paid. That's a big accounting difference...
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No, I am an ongoing subscriber because I want access to the camera features and servers cost money.
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Ah, a subscription plan for a garage door opener. Ok, hadn't thought of that. That's on me for not looking into myQ.
btw I too have some "Smart" stuff at home, and the price calculation went really quickly the way of raspberry + disk at home + public IP + domain name instead of a subscription plan.
Granted, I have the skills to build this stuff...
But a truly "smart" home *is* networked (Score:2)
and thus relies on infrastructure outside the home for internet connectivity.
Unless of course you want to build it all yourself from Allen Bradley or NI bits and pieces to the tune of a 10k/seat license.
This is the paradox of modern living. You are reliant on the good graces of tophat wearing capitalists to run the factories that produce standard sized widgets and doobobs to be able to replace your light bulbs or put in new light switches. Why on earth should it be different for home automation?
Re: But a truly "smart" home *is* networked (Score:2)
I have many automations that continue to work if my Internet goes down - I would say most, actually. The LAN and WLAN can still continue to function without Internet access. Many Wifi devices will stay up and continue to be usable by HA on the LAN/WLAN. Also, the Z-wave network works even if the IP network goes down. So does BLE (though I'm not using that).
For example, 2 of my automations use Z-wave smartplugs to reset the cable modem if Internet goes down, and reset the router if LAN goes down, respective
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It does not have to be. It is a _choice_ by the manufacturer.
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The difference is maybe that I don't tie myself, sink or swim, to a single provider. If my ISP starts acting like an idiot, I dump it and use another one. If my phone provider doesn't want to route my signals anymore, I switch provider.
Home Assist Yellow has entered the chat (Score:2)
Kind of ironic but Jeff Geerling just made a video about how home automation should not have to rely on outside resources... and well, here we are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Enshittification continues (Score:5, Informative)
Today's episode of enshittification is brought to you by Chamberlain.
Luckily I have their HomeKit bridge paired directly to a Home Assistant HomeKit controller for fully local control but this sucks for anyone relying on the API.
As others have said it's easy to stop doing that with something like a Zigbee relay.
Re: (Score:2)
They’re apparently discontinuing the bridge, too.
Home automation is 20 year first adopter problem (Score:2)
I think at this point devices have to have Matter/Thread support to be considerable and these devices do not.
Chamberlin the Oracle of Door Openers (Score:4, Interesting)
I've got a couple of Tiltmaster door openers. When I wanted to get them enabled for HomeKit I looked into the myQ platform. Even though my Tiltmaster openers were less than 18 months old at the time they weren't supported by myQ and there was no adapter kits etc. Official solution was to replace the door openers with compatible models, buy the myQ & HomeKit bridge kit and they wouldn't even offer a trade in on the other openers. The myQ and HomeKit equipment was also quite expensive. Looked into myQ software platform and all I saw was people complaining about how bad it was unless you used it with HomeKit or HomeAssistant. The more I looked into Chamberlin they just came off as the Oracle of door openers in their openly hostile attitude & behaviour towards their customers. In the end got a couple of cheap Meross MSG100's with HomeKit support for around $100 and I'm very happy with them. Do everything I want out of them with HomeKit & CarPlay.
It’s worse: Integrations are a LIE (Score:2)
It’s worse than the story even says.
If you try to use the Alarm.com integration, you will find that you cannot view or record anything from any built-in cameras. The Alarm.com integration simply DOES NOT support that device. And, to even use the Alarm.com integration, you have to dissociate the device from MyQ, meaning no other integrations can be used at the same time. Say goodbye to Amazon Key Delivery if you wanted that option.
So, the claims on the box are a demonstrable LIE.
And now I can’t e
Court? (Score:2, Interesting)
No so smart home ... (Score:2)
At least on the part of those that bought this crap and assumed it would work long-term. Here is a hint: No "smart home" devices will work long-term unless there is an explicite assurance with actual legal value given. Most vendors in this market are essentially just after a quick buck and could not care less about their customers long-term.
Serves them right (Score:2)
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Say it like it is: Idiots that hand someone they don't know the keys to their home and ask them politely if they'd be so nice to open their garage door for them.
Anything advertising the cloud (Score:2)
Is instantly avoided by me. Screw cloud services. Local or go away.
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Ever since marketing drones started selling "The Cloud", one thing has been true. If it's not on your machine, under your complete control, it isn't yours. Whatever it is, you have given it to somebody else, and they're letting you believe you still own it for as long as it suits them. Finally, years later and after experiencing many variations on the theme described above, most of my friends have finally come around. I'm out of patience with people who buy into this nonsense. When the inevitable happe
Serious legal question (Score:2)
Ok, IANAL, but I have a question for anyone who might be: You buy a system that comes with particular capabilities - in this case, it integrates with your home automation software. After purchase, the manufacturer disables that capability. Is this not grounds for legal action? Civil, perhaps breach of contract? Possibly even criminal, theft?
In a related situation: our new EV recently flashed up new T&C. There was no sensible way to read them on the display, and certainly no way to compare them with wha
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That would depend mostly on what the TOS say. If they stated "you may only use the API to interface with our devices" and you buy third party devices because they're cheaper and now they fail to work, the only one you could sue is the manufacturer of the knock-off devices that tried to piggyback on the original maker.
Not defending that policy, actually, I would blame the buyer for buying something where someone else has the ability to disable their product.
Stop buying IoT crap (Score:2)
If everyone stopped buying hardware that required a server out there somewhere in order to work, manufacturers would stop making that stuff.
I for one do not own anything that needs to "phone home" (my phone is a low-end Nokia Android that doesn't need to phone home to Nokia or Google to work, my PC is a vanilla Windows 10 machine that will work even without internet or phoning home to Microsoft, my router is a TP-Link that does all its normal LAN and WiFi stuff and etc even if the internet link is down and
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IoT is not the problem. The problem are "Intelligently Designed Internet Of Things" devices that are aimed at their acronym.
The moniker IoT doesn't imply "phone home device". Or rather, it does not imply that the "home" is somewhere outside your home. It only means that there is a thing that can be made to communicate via the internet. That's it. Who it communicates with is not defined.
That we let the industry define "home" as "your maker, master and controller", that is the problem.
No sympathy (Score:2)
If you buy something and let someone else control it, you get what you deserve.
No "smart" device will enter my home that hand someone else the keys to the castle.
Work Around With Alexa (Score:2)
MyQ has an Alexa skill. I use this in combination with a virual switch to tie MyQ to my Hubitat system. No need to use MyQ API at all.
Honestly what do you expect from the guy... (Score:2)
that advocated for appeasing Hitler?
It's like they're literally Nazis.
Cloud free solutions (Score:2)
This is why I want all my home tech to be âoeoff grid friendlyâ and work without the need for an internet connection (but with functional wifi, zigbee, etc). Smart switches should be able to function in manual mode if the wifi is down or I have a guest who doesnâ(TM)t have an app.
Jeff Geerling also has the same philosophy, which he describes in this video:
https://youtu.be/vTwyInX4KyM [youtu.be]
The different IoT protocols Explained (Score:3)
Zigbee - had the world's worst alliance. The alliance would actively fuck over existing device makers. Claimed an open standard but nothing about it was open. Devices would work without internet connectivity. Devices would interoperate without their manufacturers ever even knowing about each other. Had by far the easiest user experience for adding new devices..
Matter - Matter is mostly the zigbee application layer usually over Thread over 802.15.4. Open standard and open test spec. In reality requires an internet connection, requires device manufacturer to always support the device, requires hub operator to support the device. Also all the money is in controlling the devices and almost none is in the making of the devices.
WiFi - no application layer. Joining devices with no user interface is either a nightmare or a huge security risk. Usually both. Because there is no application layer you need continuing support for your device by both your hub and your device maker.
Blue tooth, Blue tooth low energy - limited application layer interoperabiliy..
Summary - Zigbee is by far the best protocol but because of the zigbee alliance I used to recommend to clients that they implement z-wave first. That has now changed as the zigbee alliance has morphed into the Open Standards Alliance and is now responsible for Matter, Zigbee and Z-wave. Expect the alliance to actively try and kill Zigbee and z-wave in favour of Matter. Matter is likely the future because it gives so much control to the hub makers and so much potential for revenue to them.
Good fucking luck (Score:2)
The moral for smart home users, as summed up by Home Assistant founder Paulus Schoutsen, is: "Buy products that work locally and won't stop functioning when management wants an additional revenue stream."
This doesnt seem to be an option.
Chamberlain sucks but... (Score:2)
Really (Score:2)
The same lesson, over and over (Score:2)
You can't rely on the cloud for important processes or data.
That's as plug dumb as using Windows in life support equipment.
If you want reliable systems that don't stop working when the weather affects the phone lines or some asshat decides to stop providing a feature/service or otherwise fucks you.
That applies to software subscription models, too.
This product gets worse and worse! (Score:2)
I tell you what... I'm kind of happy now that I kept my 1940's era wooden garage doors when I bought my current house, last year. It has a small 2 car tucked-under garage, and I tried to get garage door openers installed when I first moved in. The sales guy who came out to estimate the project told me it was impossible to get them installed, due to the limited space in the garage. (He thought there was *just* enough room to install one of those side-mounted openers for one door, but only by making the other