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Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

home-assistant.io

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Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#181

Post by joelfried »

sokoloff wrote: post #101
malermeister wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with either statement, but I think both of those are a price worth paying to avoid having hardware become e-waste because software support was stopped.

I agree with that conclusion. I think we'd also need to figure out some durable and stable way to reach a conclusion on "when should the software be published out of escrow?" that handles a bunch of the various edge cases. "What happens to devices that are one-time programmable? What devices are in-scope/out-of-scope? Does this apply to radio firmware as well as general CPU firmware? Is the software license changed a…

I agree as well, though I don't think we need to figure out all edge cases before the legislation is viable. All we need to do is allow any person who purchased said software a private cause of action in which they can petition a court to release the code. Then a judge could decide based on the merits of the person's need whether the code should be released or not.

Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#182

Post by giancarlostoro »

a254613e wrote: post #90
TeMPOraL wrote: post #7

From company statement: > Our customers rely on us to make access simple without sacrificing quality and reliability. Unauthorized app integrations, stemming from only 0.2% of myQ users, previously accounted for more than half of the traffic to and from the myQ system, and at times constituted a substantial DDOS event that consumed high quantities of resources. Yeah, that sounds plausible, because: - Home Assistant u…

The main reason why HA accounted for so many requests is probably because it was a polling integration, requesting data every 30 seconds from the server, while the official app either had push events when something changes, or it updated state when the app gets opened.

Why not... just allow HA receive callback events at that point when things change? I feel like this has an easy resolve that doesn't piss off your power user customers, and makes them encourage others to invest in your products, IE power users, and they'll come back because despite being a little extra engineering effort, they were glad you thought of them.

Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#183

Post by giancarlostoro »

ryukoposting wrote: post #116
a254613e wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason why HA accounted for so many requests is probably because it was a polling integration, requesting data every 30 seconds from the server, while the official app either had push events when something changes, or it updated state when the app gets opened.

Isn't the high road solution here to open your API to enable users to make a less shitty HA integration? Either way, they'll almost certainly pull the plug on this service sometime before the end of the decade.

I would argue that letting HA define a callback URL or some way to receive those events instead of relying on polling would do it. But also, are they caching the responses? I have a weird feeling that the vendor is not caching enough, especially for data that changes insanely infrequently.

Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#184

Post by BenjiWiebe »

duxup wrote: post #172
mikeryan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a MyQ door opener (and home assistant) This is bullshit. Their app is bloatware that they use to try to push additional services like Amazon home delivery etc. I mean it’s just a button, that’s all it needs to do. I’m going to replace it with one of the recommended devices. This is such an overt money grab.

I have the MyQ app (iOS). I don't mind it at all. App works, fairly fast, the stupid extra stuff is just a chunk of the screen I can ignore / don't have to do / interact with. I don't approve of the API situation but the app itself doesn't feel particularly bad.

The iOS app sounds like it's better than the Android one.

Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#185

Post by tzs »

lvh wrote: post #15

Based on my local big box store and garage installer availability, Chamberlain has a de facto monopoly. They also pulled the rug out from under customers: that behavior had been in Home Assistant since 2017, and it's their own recent changes that caused the alleged "DDoS". They say it's to promote official products, but the company previously had a local hub that didn't require their cloud service and discontinued it…

> It's unclear if the CTO just doesn't understand that "DDoS" generally implies malice, or if they're intentionally using that language to blame users for using their product.

I've definitely seen "DDoS" used when there was no malice, such as when a developer accidentally releases a client that generates way more traffic than it was supposed to. Probably because we don't seem to have a good term for "event that at the server looks exactly like a malicious DDoS attack but was actually due to a mistake or to the server becoming unexpectedly popular" :-).

My favorite example of whatever we are supposed to call this was John Carmack in 1997. From his 1997-12-09 .plan:

> Cyrix has a new processor that is significantly faster at single precision floating point calculations if you don't do any double precision calculations anywhere.

> Quake had always kept its timebase as a double precision seconds value, but I agreed to change it over to an integer millisecond timer to allow the global setting of single precision mode.

> We went through and changed all the uses of it that we found, but the routine that sends heartbeats to the master servers was missed.

> So, instead of sending a packet every 300 seconds, it is sending one every 300 MILLISECONDS.

> Oops.

> To a server, it won't really make a difference. A tiny extra packet three times a second is a fraction of the bandwidth of a player.

> However, if there are thousands of network games in progress, that is a LOT of packets flooding idsoftware.com.

> So, please download the new executable if you are going to run any servers (even servers started through the menus).

Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#188

Post by atonse »

duxup wrote: post #172
mikeryan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a MyQ door opener (and home assistant) This is bullshit. Their app is bloatware that they use to try to push additional services like Amazon home delivery etc. I mean it’s just a button, that’s all it needs to do. I’m going to replace it with one of the recommended devices. This is such an overt money grab.

I have the MyQ app (iOS). I don't mind it at all. App works, fairly fast, the stupid extra stuff is just a chunk of the screen I can ignore / don't have to do / interact with. I don't approve of the API situation but the app itself doesn't feel particularly bad.

I do agree that their app works perfectly fine. And it's as responsive as HomeKit, but I don't want to have to launch 20 apps for my various devices.

In fact, after my initial irritation, I thought "at the end of the day, if they made a couple shortcuts available then I could still say Open the Garage door" – It's not perfect like homekit but it'll go a long way to placating many of us who don't want to keep launching a separate app.

Re: Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

#190

Post by siffland »

You would think a company would like to negotiate and be seen by a community as a positive company. I would not buy a product from them on principal after their statement. myQ could have engaged the home assistant maintainer and worked out, less API calls or something.

On a side note, i do love my home assistant, but ANYTHING that has to do with entry into my house is not and will not be automated, garage doors, door locks, etc. However that is my personal paranoia talking.

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