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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

#191

Post by greggsy »

Angostura wrote: post #121
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.

Possible answers would be for the company to create an official integration, using a change state trigger rather than a polling trigger - or possibly to throttle requests from a particular IP to a certain number per day to incentivise parsimonious usage

HA even claim that it’s used as a test bed for many iot products, so it can often have integrations before any other platform. Kind of makes sense, give many cross platform integrations there are in it.

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

#192

Post by alistairSH »

lostapathy wrote: post #125
alistairSH wrote: post #71

Aren’t garage door button just simple momentary switches? So use an aftermarket “smart” remote or button?

Not with newer openers - they speak a serial protocol to the opener.

Oh wow, what a pain in the butt.

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

#193

Post by rjmunro »

egberts1 wrote: post #139
lvh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That helps, but a remote integration doesn't _have_ to be hostile. I get that it's different from IoT, and most of my stuff is local Zigbee after learning the hard way, but my Home Assistant also talks to the Norwegian meteorological institute and Tailscale :) One reason this is tricky to do is because up until let's say the last 6 months or so, myQ _wasn't_ hostile, even if it was Cloud-based. (I get that that align…

All remote are more potentially hostile than any local will ever be.

And a local integration can be hostile if it's not publicly documented and they can update it / make it go away with an over the air update.

What matters is that they provide proper documentation for their APIs, encourage devs to use them, and don't have a history of breaking old clients with new firmware updates (without very good security reasons).

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

#194

Post by rjmunro »

malermeister wrote: post #50
sokoloff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software escrow processes could (partially) solve this, at an upfront cost for every company developing and selling such a device (meaning, at a price that will ultimately be paid by consumers).

Some government agency could be doing the escrow, at no charge to the company.

All you need is an option you can set on a private repo in Github so that if you close your account or don't pay your fees for 3 months it automatically becomes public rather than gets deleted.

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

#196

Post by ranting-moth »

Spivak wrote: post #179
ranting-moth wrote: post #70

> We understand that this impacts a small percentage of users, ... Wow, what a contemptuous statement. I have news for you, Chamberlain Group. You are not only alienating, being hostile and losing a "Small percentage of users" (most companies would prefer to call them "valued customers", but I get it). You are causing an enormous permanent damage to your own brand.

As much as I want this to be true I kinda doubt it. People who install and configure home assistant are far and away niche users. Almost everyone with one of their products will just use a physical clicker or pair it with their car directly.

These specific niche users are the geeks that all relatives and friends ask what to get.

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

#197

Post by pmontra »

_ZeD_ wrote: post #114
pmontra wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I forgot it open.

the real solution here is to make it auto close locally.

That's a nice to have feature. However there are cases when one wants to keep it open for hours or, as pointed by other replies, to open it to let somebody in. An edge case I just thought about: open it to let somebody delivery a package inside, possibly by looking at them with a camera, and then close it.

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

#198

Post by pmontra »

colinmorelli wrote: post #73
RobotToaster wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to access a garage door opener when away from home?

Putting aside the very legitimate use cases highlighted in other messages, a very simple one is: you're just arriving at home, but are still not (yet) connected to wifi. These very practical daily occurrences can make devices incredibly annoying and frustrating for typical consumers who want it to just work.

That's why I have a radio remote in my car and in my living room and never bothered automating the garage door any further.

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

#199

Post by twicetwice »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #182
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.

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.

Good suggestion, but where and how does HA receive callbacks? I would guess that almost all HA instances are behind residential LANs and most aren't accessible on the public internet. You could use dynamic DNS and forward ports, but that's flaky, you might run into CGNAT, etc. And anyway, it's best if your HA instance isn't publicly addressable; mine is only accessible over my personal WireGuard VPN and I intend to keep it that way.

I'm sure this is a solvable and solved problem, but I do believe it is non-trivial, and potentially a major headache for a company to implement just to support a tiny niche of users. I'd be delighted to find out I'm wrong though!

And, unfortunately, the business case isn't there, since this weakens lock-in effects. I don't endorse this reason—that's why I run my own HA instance and don't buy or use any products that require the cloud or otherwise can't be operated entirely locally (including flashing Valetudo to my robot vacuum!).

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

#200

Post by gregmac »

YiraldyGuber wrote: post #95
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…

Unofficial IoT software and integrations are not (much?) better. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was partly due to a junk integration for this device cobbled together by an amateur and replicated by thousands more amateurs into their own ginormous pile of other junk YAMLs.

> partly due to a junk integration for this device cobbled together by an amateur

Judge for yourself, here's the code:

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/tree/5523e9947d82ac14... (before it was removed)

https://github.com/arraylabs/pymyq/tree/master/pymyq

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