Live data from Hacker News

Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

home-assistant.io

251–260 of 655 posts

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

#252

Partially responsible for this. (Sold Lockitron to Chamberlain in 2017 which became the basis for Amazon Key integrations.) Contrary to the popular sentiment in a lot of the comments here, there’s not much value in the analytics. As we all painfully found out in the 2010’s, there are only two viable recurring revenue streams in the IoT space - charging for video storage and charging for commercial access. Chamberlain…

A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house, or the driver simply takes it with them after posting the porch picture. And I've seen boxes arrive that were forced open and the contents pulled out. But sure, it's the customers who are untrustworthy not the delivery people.

True. Delivery drivers consistently deliver to my neighbor instead of myself. The last three digits of our addresses are 885 and 855, and they consistently confuse the two. They’re tired, overworked, underpaid, and I honestly don’t blame them. But I wouldn’t trust anyone in my garage/home when I’m not home. Not sure why these companies think that will actually work.

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

#253
I had a Z-Wave garage door opener which was wired to my old garage door opener's button switch port. The old unit's logic board started having issues, so I went ahead and replaced it with a cheap Chamberlain. I got the most basic unit thinking the one-button opener would be a basic switch style like old, but alas it is still some kind of serial connection. The Z-Wave controller can't effectively signal to it, but since it has a basic tilt sensor it can at least open the door state.

I'm thinking I'll just get a cheap garage door opener remote, solder the trigger pin to the button on the remote, and tape that to the ceiling next to the z-wave controller. Janky, but at least I'll be able to get it functional again to send the command.

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

#254
Sigh. I'm otherwise perfectly happy with my Liftmaster openers. As long as HomeKit continues to work (and it should; I don't allow the bridge access to the Internet), I'm still happy. I did buy a ratgdo device as a backup, however. And when I buy new openers at some point off in the future, Chamberlain is off the list.

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

#255
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devices that rely on cloud infrastructure should be required to carry an expiration date right on the box. "This item guaranteed to receive support until XX/XX/XX"

I prefer to have an e-waste law that says that if you stop maintaining the service, you have to open-source it :)

So they publish the crypto certificate that allows opening anybody's door?

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

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not simply allow HA to integrate on site rather than to have to go through some crappy service that likely will not last the lifetime of the doors in the first place?

That's also a good question, one reason I'd be okay with having callbacks is if your software that handles what to do is on a server somewhere else entirely, maybe you own multiple homes and don't want to run several on-premise servers when one could do, I'm also thinking of more than just whatever HA is doing and whatever a power user might do.

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

#257

Partially responsible for this. (Sold Lockitron to Chamberlain in 2017 which became the basis for Amazon Key integrations.) Contrary to the popular sentiment in a lot of the comments here, there’s not much value in the analytics. As we all painfully found out in the 2010’s, there are only two viable recurring revenue streams in the IoT space - charging for video storage and charging for commercial access. Chamberlain…

A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house, or the driver simply takes it with them after posting the porch picture. And I've seen boxes arrive that were forced open and the contents pulled out. But sure, it's the customers who are untrustworthy not the delivery people.

> A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage.

Same, but this is irrelevant to the point GP was making. Some minority of people do want Amazon Key (and similar services), and those people are now unable to claim their package wasn't delivered once they sign up for the service.

Add those people up and you have something worth millions, even if there aren't many of them.

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

#258
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the above were not true, at that point you're back to an internet enabled smart home device system Home Assistant Cloud is essentially a TCP-level proxy (IOW Nabu Casa sees jack squat): > The remote UI encrypts all communication between your browser and your local instance. Encryption is provided by a Let’s Encrypt certificate. Under the hood, your local Home Assistant instance is connected to one of our cu…

Yeah so this is why I said "no way for the typical consumer to have a product experience like this" because what you're saying is true, but not something an individual can rely on. Typical consumers have no way of ensuring their UI is, in fact, encrypting the data and not farming it out. They cannot verify the source code themselves, because they don't have the technical skill set they'd need to do so (nor, frankly,…

> The point I'm getting at is that, eventually, a consumer has to trust a third party who may have incentives that don't align with their own. They're just playing a game of which vendor to place that trust in.

The problem is that approximately NONE of the commercial vendors are in any way trustworthy. They're really pushing hard the degree of abuse they inflict on the customers, and social immunity takes long time to build.

The ultimate solution IMO is to have people trust in people they can actually trust - that is, make the third parties local. A partner, a kid, a neighbor, a small company servicing the local community and physically located in it. At this scale, trust can be managed through tried-and-true social techniques humans are innately good at, and have successfully used for many thousands of years. This is how you make most of the tech industry and adjacent problems go away.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find it handy for when I'm outside but not in my car—on my bike, working around the yard, etc.

For the "working around the yard" idea, I just got a keypad mounted near the garage door. It is wireless, it just acts like a remote which requires a pin before it sends the toggle command.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A stressed out underpaid and overworked delivery driver is the last person I want in my garage. Verified deliveries are left at the wrong house, or the driver simply takes it with them after posting the porch picture. And I've seen boxes arrive that were forced open and the contents pulled out. But sure, it's the customers who are untrustworthy not the delivery people.

True. Delivery drivers consistently deliver to my neighbor instead of myself. The last three digits of our addresses are 885 and 855, and they consistently confuse the two. They’re tired, overworked, underpaid, and I honestly don’t blame them. But I wouldn’t trust anyone in my garage/home when I’m not home. Not sure why these companies think that will actually work.

In US homes the garage is often a way to access the house with minimal security between the two.
Post reply on HN