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Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

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

#411
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.…

Meanwhile, it is quite stunning to me that European carriers would intentionally mis-deliver (i.e. leave with a neighbor) packages rather than just leaving them on the porch! Over many years and many neighbors, I've had plenty who I would be happy to let receive my packages and plenty I would very much not. Likewise, I would be quite peeved as a permanent WFH-er to be the neighborhood final delivery guy.

There are plenty of places in the US where packages left on the porch aren't secure, but there are also plenty of places where it's completely fine and saves everyone time. I've never once had a package stolen off my porch anywhere from an apartment in the Bay Area to a house on 10 acres in rural Oregon. I really think that the places where package theft is rampant are the exception, not the rule.

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

#412
post #343

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…

If anything, Chamberlain should be paying Amazon for the right to be included with Key. It drives sales to Chamberlain.

Chamberlain owns like 80% of the garage door market in the US. They don't need any help.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite confident my parents and the many people like them in the world would not find running VPN/Tailscale/ZeroTier to be "easy." Nor would they have any idea how to troubleshoot when those services have issues. Nor would they want to play intermediary between Tailscale and myQ customer support to figure out which one is broken and fix it. Having options like this is great for powerusers, but the vast majority of…

My wife doesn't understand what I do on the computer all the time and she's pretty doubtful of my claim that server racks are normal household items. Nevertheless setting up the HA app on her phone with a Wireguard VPN was super simple and she's got a good handle on that. That being said, setting up the HA and Wireguard server is definitely a more demanding experience. Although once setup it's pretty much a once and…

> Although once setup it's pretty much a once and done sort of thing

I guess you started using Home Assistance recently / shortly... and/or you use only a few HA integrations.

Otherwise, you would have already run into enough troubles with updates.

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

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that can be achieved by giving the retailer a one-off access code/secret which will be handed to the delivery driver by the retailer's company? At no point does "preventing random people in your garage" required a greedy middleman in the path between you and whoever you want to give your garage door access code.

Many people already have a keypad mounted outside that will open the garage door. You can set up a guest code there and give to Amazon, or anyone you want. There is zero need for internet-enabled smartness in the garage door opener here.

> There is zero need for internet-enabled smartness in the garage door opener here.

Yes and no. At the scale Amazon operates, I can see value in being able to automate the process rather than requiring each driver to find and operate the keypad for each garage.

Automation, if implemented perfectly (which it obviously won't be) also prevents one form of bad actor. An Amazon delivery driver who uses your code in the future to gain unauthorized access to your garage. Automation allows this code to be limited to a single use.

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

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Company wants to sell an iot product. 2. Through research they find user wants to interact with their smart device while outside of range of wifi/bluetooth. 3. Company builds device firmware and cloud infrastructure to support this goal. 4. Company wants to simplify business logic and doesn't provide local (wifi/bluetooth/zigbee) support. Online only can service both on-premise and off-premise. 5. Company needs to…

7. insecure, opaque devices that have always-on internet connections, that owners cannot upgrade/fix/defend against and require external actors to protect (ISP's blackholing bad traffic) Remember, the S in IoT is for Security. They could simplify their business logic by making sure local first is reliable, and internet access can be turned off, and supporting vendors making (user-controlled, upgradeable, etc) gateway…

I don't disagree with you, since the company I work for supports both local network access to their devices as well as cloud access for when you are outside the home. But supporting both does not simplify business logic, it increases complexity. It introduces more states and failure points that your firmware devs and app devs need to account for.

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subject to location service accuracy, which as we know, is ±1m... in movies, ±10m in reality... except more often it's ±50m or worse, because who knows why.

This can happen. A delivery person comes to a door, presses the button in their app, and nothing happens. So it's immediately obvious that they are at a wrong location. And they know that they can't just leave the package there, they have to find the correct door. And there's a flow in the Amazon delivery app to mark an incorrect geolocation, so they won't be penalized for taking longer time. The app also has picture…

> And they know that they can't just leave the package there, they have to find the correct door.

Except that's not true at all. Amazon had my new house geolocated wrong (think robin instead of arden st in their system, even though I put the address in correct and it read back correct).

First delivery came, "delivered", not at my door... Contact CS, get a refund, continue.

"Ok, I'll setup key so they know it's wrong and deliver it in my garage."

Pieced together from video:

Second delivery arrives at wrong location, garage door opens...and was never closed. "delivered"

Took me contacting CS 5 times, with 5 failed deliveries, and doing an email bomb to get them to update my geo-location. Turned out it was literally across the fucking city, ~8 miles away.

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

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They think it will work because if you refuse to do it they won't refund your stolen package unless you file a police report, and convenience with huge downsides wins with consumers 99% of the time over effort with no downsides. This is just conjecture, btw, I have no authoritative knowledge of their plans to do anything.

As things are, missing packages are not really a police matter for the recipient. Recipients don't actually know that a package was stolen, since it never made it into their possession. Amazon could certainly file police reports, but that requires a higher bar of evidence than throw-and-go delivery service provides, and either way it Doesn't Scale (TM). I'd guess it's more likely the opposite dynamic, where they'll g…

That's assuming that the delivery driver isn't defrauding both amazon and the customer.

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

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, this would be cool for say a fridge in a mudroom...

What's old is new again! https://www.core77.com/posts/103681/When-Houses-Had-Built-In...

This is infinitely more sensible than some crazy internet connected garage door opener scheme. Somehow I think it's far to sensible for modern culture though. Everyone's lost their minds.
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