Live data from Hacker News

Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

home-assistant.io

441–450 of 655 posts

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

#441
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that a garage door accessory company relies on showing ads is a triumph for MBAs programs and a tragedy for the human race.

The stuff I learn in this thread is so unbelievable that I don't even know what to say anymore. This feels like pulled straight from Idiocracy .

To some extent, serving ads is like owning a money printer. I can't really get upset that everyone wants to own a money printer. I just hope that there is a backlash against ads someday, where they start having a negative effect. "Oh, Toyota is constantly advertising in my garage door app? I'm going to buy a Ford instead." People say that the US government defaulting on its debt would be the end of the world, but the real end of the world is one where advertisements stop working!

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

#442
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I gave amazon my code for a Christmas present that absolutely could not have been stolen from my porch (as many other recently had). As a working man, I couldn't sit at home to wait for it. I was a little nervous, but I have cameras at least. I then removed all reference to this code from my account. Then, one driver entered while I was going about my day in there and saw me waiting with a hockey stick, as I was wond…

Could you have instead changed your code? It's generally best to assume that it's not possible to delete secrets once they are shared (after all, in worst case, the driver could have just remembered the code from the previous visit)

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

#443
post #212

The reason they caused that much traffic is because Home-Assistant has no other way of finding out the status. If only there was a LOCAL way. But I can't poll the device locally. I can't send it commands.

Good news: you can now, I just installed it and it was easy and fun. https://github.com/PaulWieland/ratgdo But it is external to the device, you're right :) And for some crazy reason this guy is getting a lot of orders recently ;)

Of all the options we have, the RatGDO is the only one that taps into the serial connection to the Garage Door and circumvents the "security+" marketing gimmick. With it you get access to all the door metrics/controls. Door State, Door Position, Wireless Remote Lock/Unlock, Obstruction Status, Light Status. So you don't need any extra sensors and wires dangling around.

To each their own. The other options seem to work great for most people. But RatGDO will work best for me (And they arrive tomorrow. Stoked). I want to know exactly when my door starts to open. Not 10 seconds later when the tilt or reed sensors are triggered, because I want my exterior lights to come on immediately and voice notifications to not be delayed. Also I want to lock my wireless remotes out at night and when I'm away because my wife uses her garage for projects and parks outside with her remote in the car. Lastly I want something that appears the least messy.

My only minor concern is Chaimberland would somehow try and gimp this solution with a firmware update. My initial thoughts were that they would probably break the wall buttons in everyone's homes. I still don't believe they have the ability to update the wall button firmware to work with any changes to the software in the motor. Everyone started echoing that after I made an assumption about it, but I'm not 100% certain if it's the case or not. Alas it doesn't matter because I'm disconnecting my doors themselves from wifi, unpairing them from MyQ and deleting my account once my RatGDOs are wired up.

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

#444
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I gave amazon my code for a Christmas present that absolutely could not have been stolen from my porch (as many other recently had). As a working man, I couldn't sit at home to wait for it. I was a little nervous, but I have cameras at least. I then removed all reference to this code from my account. Then, one driver entered while I was going about my day in there and saw me waiting with a hockey stick, as I was wond…

> and now I sometimes get delivery drivers getting pissed off at me (for some reason) that the code doesn't work after they ring my doorbell

Since Amazon clearly has no idea what they are doing, I would put up a note next to the keypad saying “Amazon drivers: just drop the package, there is no code”

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

#445
post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave amazon my code for a Christmas present that absolutely could not have been stolen from my porch (as many other recently had). As a working man, I couldn't sit at home to wait for it. I was a little nervous, but I have cameras at least. I then removed all reference to this code from my account. Then, one driver entered while I was going about my day in there and saw me waiting with a hockey stick, as I was wond…

Could you have instead changed your code? It's generally best to assume that it's not possible to delete secrets once they are shared (after all, in worst case, the driver could have just remembered the code from the previous visit)

The second half of the comment is what happened after they changed the code...

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

What's interesting is the "ongoing operational costs" should be calculated to NPV and rolled into the cost of the garage door one-time-purchase. We're talking about a $3-400 garage door opener not a $20 echo dot.

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

#447

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…

Amazon expects me to weaken my physical security posture to help them defend against an activity I don't engage in and is in no way my responsibility?

AND

Chamberlain expects me to weaken my digital security posture so they can run some opaque crap on my network¹ that I have very little observability into and even less control over so they can make money?

Money is one hell of a drug because they are high.

How about amazon builds (at their expense) an amazon controlled box, slap a mcu on, do authentication over nfc, rfid, etc etc. Offer it to customers free of charge, hell throw in a sweetener to get them to adopt.

[1] I have a default deny in AND out isolated vlan for crap like this, even if you don't have a network background try to set one up if your networking equipment is capable.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A solution to that is to make the cloud-based service as dumb as possible, only operating as a NAT traversal helper and/or TURN relay, over which the local-only protocol is tunnelled.

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

#449
post #447

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…

Amazon expects me to weaken my physical security posture to help them defend against an activity I don't engage in and is in no way my responsibility? AND Chamberlain expects me to weaken my digital security posture so they can run some opaque crap on my network¹ that I have very little observability into and even less control over so they can make money? Money is one hell of a drug because they are high. How about a…

They're building and deploying those boxes through the Amazon Hub program. There's no single-family size yet though.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bold of them to assume that I will trust a stranger with access to my garage.

They'll just monopolize garage openers like smart phones and you'll have 2 options both which will be hooked into the surveillance grid.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN