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Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

arstechnica.com

71–80 of 191 posts

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#73

"unauthorized users". They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. The company I work for has a policy where we don't block third party clients, as long as they use a uniquely identifiable user agent and API key that we provide to them. That way we can easily monitor if they're calling endpoints excessively and make sure that our alarms don't go off when they did something wrong, but still…

> The company I work for has a policy.. [lists some sound policies] Just a blind guess but is your company free of control by shareholders, venture capitalists and private equity?

In their “list some sound policies”, they did not mention gather as much data about the user, store that data, analyze that data for earning money from ad sales. If those policies were not left out for convenience and it truly does not happen, then I’d venture the answer to your question is no.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company I work for has a policy.. [lists some sound policies] Just a blind guess but is your company free of control by shareholders, venture capitalists and private equity?

> is your company free of control by shareholders A company is by definition controlled by its shareholders.

> A company is by definition...

company: noun kʌm.pə.ni

an organization that sells goods or services in order to make money:

- OED

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#75
post #60
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying smart home devices with cloud integration also just means that at some point, the manufacturer will declare it obsolete and will rip out support to force you to re-buy every 5-7y.

Or force you to make an account and opt-in to their metrics instead of using your devices locally-only after years. Looking at you, Phillips Hue.

Luckily, I just have to live with the nagging box about creating an account, but it continues to work without doing so. I just lose that screen real estate.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#76
post #35

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…

> Chamberlain and Overhead Door Company (owned by a Japanese door company). 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 peo…

> 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's usually a rope hanging down you can pull on to disengage the chain lock, then the door will be loose to move.

http://www.thedoorco.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Garage-D...

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#77
post #71

I have their myQ smart garage system, and they wanted something like $600 for a "lifetime subscription" to be able to open my garage door from my tesla. What a joke.

Oh that's too harsh. Don't forget, you could subscribe to this valuable and expensive to run HTTP handler for an ongoing $45/year.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#78
Chamberlain has always rubbed me the wrong way...

A friend of mine has a relation (uncle?) that was part of the litigation team that spent startling amounts of time trying to block third party accessories from being able to interoperate with Chamberlain openers, because of their proprietary "encryption" routine. But their encryption was startlingly simple, IIRC something like basically being one of 3 effective codes.

If you're going to do security, don't half ass it, and don't use shitty security to litigate.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#79
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this door opener from Ryobi had caught on. Thought it was a great idea. https://www.homeconstructionimprovement.com/ryobi-launches-l...

I have one of those and trust me, you do not want it. I was excited about it when we bought the house, but: 1. The remote control range is terrible. Both of our remotes regularly fail to operate the door from less than a car length in to the driveway, through a normal garage door in a normal wood framed home, even with fresh batteries. 2. EVERY control accessory is proprietary, even the wall button. Our house came wi…

In my personal experience with Ryobi products, I would have been equally served buying from Harbor Freight. At least the prices would have been cheaper for an item that is expected to be a crap shoot on it working. Ryobi batteries have been known to be badly manufactured so a newly purchased battery will not charge. If you take the time to research it and call (no webform for this), they will ask for serial numbers and send you a replacement to be delivered. If there’s a known batch with defects, recall the damn products.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#80
post #5

> Ah, now it makes sense. Your garage door opener app isn't here only to open your garage door; it's here to display ads and upsell you on services. > "I clicked door open/close event and it popped up the video storage subscription dialog to ask me to subscribe," I mean... who, while waiting to get into or out of garage, sitting in the car or soon to be sitting in the car clicks on ads to buy something? Wouldn't conv…

Slightly less irritating than garage door, but: I’ve been going to my baseball team’s website recently to buy stuff because they won, and a 5 second video ad pops up every time you go… I’m here, I want to spend money, and you want to show me ads?

Similar story: I toured Wrigley Field with my dad last week. We're on the MLB team's site, we want to give you money...nope, first you gotta install the MLB app.
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