I don't know the industry well but I always wondered why it was not ripe for a solid entrant to come in and easily scoop up at least some of the market. I think there is only 2 companies now that control most of the American market. Chamberlain and Overhead Door Company (owned by a Japanese door company). I think I have mostly had Chamberlain brands and of course the door itself always works but the tech behind is ha…
Sidenote but in Europe many architects pick Hörmann:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B6rmann
I've got this both here (apartment in a building) and in another country at my vacation house. I've even got the same remote control in both (EU) countries.
They've got their own home automation system too but I'm not using it. I know there are people just opening the box containing the motor and screwing (no need to solder AIUI) some open home-automation thinggamagic into them.
They're compatible with cars having "homelink" too (buttons in your car which you can configure to act as this or that remote control).
> it had a battery backup
Oh that is sweet for...
I remember the "fun" of having electricity down (black out in the entire rural area) and needing to hurry up to go pick my kid at school... I wasn't familiar with garage doors openers and black out meant no WiFi and no 4G (black out was obviously affecting 4G too: don't know why but everytime we had that black out, we'd have no 4G either). Anyway I ended up removing a safety wire on the garage door, to then remove a bolt, then used a rope and a pulley of sort to create leverage to be able to lift up the wide sectional door.
There probably was a simple way but I was in a hurry.
Fixing the mess was fun too: it involved watching YouTube vids and talking with my brother on the phone (he's familiar with these) to understand how to "clip" the motor again on the belt (or whatever that is called) and how to have the door close at the correct spot (at first there was a big gap!).