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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

#331

Post by kortilla »

ziml77 wrote: post #218
thecapybara wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly, Chamberlin had an optional accessory that added HomeKit support to garage door openers, and that was discontinued last year. Home Assistant is capable of acting as a HomeKit hub, allowing it to control HomeKit compatible devices locally that otherwise would've required a cloud connection.

I'm so glad HomeKit exists because without it I'm positive the vast majority of "smart" home devices wouldn't support any kind of local connectivity.

It sucks how many iot devices skip home kit integration for this very reason. :(

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

#332

Post by dburkland »

cyberax wrote: post #300
cptcobalt wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's a distraction and orthogonal to your point, but your statement of a "key fob for your Tesla for $300" is fallacious and incorrect. Tesla uses Phone Key with with the Tesla app as your primary method of unlocking the car, with a $20 NFC card as fallback, and the limit of paired phones is above any practical real-world use. If you want a keyfob as a status symbol, it's $175. (Mine is a desk ornament, it doe…

> If you want a keyfob as a status symbol, it's $175. (Mine is a desk ornament, it doesn't get used.) The keyfob is super-useful. It fits perfectly into that small jeans pocket (that was originally meant for watches), so you can trigger the trunk/frunk opening without taking the fob (or phone) out.

You can also trigger those same functions via a smart watch or mobile phone using Siri shortcuts (if you're an iOS user).

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

#333

Post by amluto »

Nextgrid wrote: post #327
paulgerhardt wrote: post #234

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…

Why should the garage door manufacturer take a cut if a third-party wants to use/access my garage door (which sells for real money and isn't advertised as a rental). If a homeowner wants to let Amazon, Walmart, etc to open their garage door, it should be up to him to provide them with an access token/secret/etc to enter, just like you can put a door keycode in the order notes. The interaction should be purely between…

I don't actually find this model so disgusting as long as it's implemented in a non-restrictive way.

If a garage door manufacturer offers me a (free, local) API to fully control my door and allows me to check a box to let Amazon in, what, exactly, is the problem? Sure, I could also allow Amazon in without checking the box (assuming Amazon offers the appropriate integration and I'm willing to deal with maintaining my side of it), but it also seems okay for Amazon to pay the garage door opener company for the first-party version. Everybody wins.

Forcing the actual device owner to use a crappy cloud service is an entirely different story, but it's not required for the Amazon business model. Similarly, many video recording devices support ONVIF and have an optional paid first-party video storage. (And I imagine that quite a few commercial users demand the former -- no one who operates a concierge/security desk or a serious office building or a warehouse or an industrial site has the slightest interest in using four different first-party cloud offerings from four different vendors of their various gizmos that contain cameras. They are going to run one NVR, possibly with off-site backup, with one integrated system for viewing and analyzing the feeds. And they will pay handsomely for that, and they're paying that money to one of several established companies in the space, all of whom require at least token ONVIF or RTSP compliance, and they aren't about to kick any of that money over to the camera makers, because there is no shortage of competing camera makers.)

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

#334

Post by vel0city »

sarchertech wrote: post #281
vel0city wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had an internet connected baby monitor. In the end we decided to just get a local RF one and it is a far better experience. Pair it once, and it just works. Lower power. Very reliable. Coverage throughout the house without issue. No apps to crash in the background. No dropped streams. No needing to log in to the app. No worries about features getting taken away. No subscriptions. No having to send data out to the c…

My wife works nights and she likes to be able to check in occasionally. It’s also got a millimeter wave radar that shows a breathing graph. My wife is a pediatric ER doctor and she thinks the breath tracking radar is stupid, but I like to be able to look over and see the graph because I’m a crazy person and otherwise I’d zoom in on the camera and stare at it until I see movement.

We went with an Owlet sock that we got pre-nerfing from the FDA to track breathing/O2. The internet connected monitor was actually the Owlet cam. It worked decently enough, but just headaches from it being a cloud connected camera pushed us to get an RF-based system when we wanted a second camera.

If it works for you, that's great. I'm not trying to yuck your yum, just sharing my own personal experiences.

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

#336

Post by jacquesm »

steamer25 wrote: post #225
jacquesm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not saying owners should be completely barred from modifying their systems but there are security implications to bypassing their centralized / cloud-based authentication. It'd be possible for a knows-enough-to-be-dangerous customer to modify their system in such a way that they unwittingly allow unauthenticated local access. From my point of view, Chamberlain/MyQ should be totally indemnified in such scenarios b…

You've got that backwards. Giving a third party control over your garage door is the 'security implication' you want to avoid.

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

#337

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

lock-the-spock wrote: post #246
oskapt wrote: post #128

Something that I don’t see people talking about here is that MyQ is the core/required integration component for Amazon Key in-garage delivery, a service used by millions of people to have their packages delivered to their garages instead of having them stolen off their porch. That’s why it needs Internet access. All the talk about how Chamberlain will go bankrupt because a comparatively small number of tech people st…

Somewhat off topic but it is quite stunning to me that American carriers just leave the package at the door. I lived in different European countries and in all of them the expectation is that the mailman (official mail, or any of the services like dhl, ups, etc) will ring the bell. If you don't answer they will ring the neighbour and then take it back and either try again another day or you can go to a pickup point.…

This is how it used to work in the U.S., too, until the major carriers recently realized they can make that into a paid feature for the customer. Now you can't even request something to be held at the store or distribution center for pickup without a fee or subscription.

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

#338

Post by yborg »

lock-the-spock wrote: post #246
oskapt wrote: post #128

Something that I don’t see people talking about here is that MyQ is the core/required integration component for Amazon Key in-garage delivery, a service used by millions of people to have their packages delivered to their garages instead of having them stolen off their porch. That’s why it needs Internet access. All the talk about how Chamberlain will go bankrupt because a comparatively small number of tech people st…

Somewhat off topic but it is quite stunning to me that American carriers just leave the package at the door. I lived in different European countries and in all of them the expectation is that the mailman (official mail, or any of the services like dhl, ups, etc) will ring the bell. If you don't answer they will ring the neighbour and then take it back and either try again another day or you can go to a pickup point.…

What you describe is how it worked in the US maybe 10 years ago too. But Amazon's free delivery race to the bottom made the cost of reattempts to deliver eliminate any margin. It's cheaper for Amazon to replace stolen shipments for a few people than to make multiple attempts to do re-delivery for many people. And creating a problem in order to charge people to solve the problem you created is a basic monopolist playbook move.

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

#339

Post by nfriedly »

oskapt wrote: post #128

Something that I don’t see people talking about here is that MyQ is the core/required integration component for Amazon Key in-garage delivery, a service used by millions of people to have their packages delivered to their garages instead of having them stolen off their porch. That’s why it needs Internet access. All the talk about how Chamberlain will go bankrupt because a comparatively small number of tech people st…

I just called up the folks that installed my garage door, and recommended that they look for a different brand because of how hostile Chamberlain is being towards their customers. I'm not the only one doing that.

Sure, we're just a couple drops in the ocean, but eventually those drops can start to add up.

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

#340

Post by nkrisc »

Now my setup of a Wemos D1 Mini with a relay to simulate a button press on the dumb wall mounted opener of my Chamberlain system doesn’t seem so bad. Even have sensors at either end of the track to tell the state of the door (open, closed, neither open nor closed but possibly anywhere).
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