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Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

arstechnica.com

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Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#181

Post by asielen »

dheera wrote: post #125
mavamaarten wrote: post #15

"unauthorized users". They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. The company I work for has a policy where we don't block third party clients, as long as they use a uniquely identifiable user agent and API key that we provide to them. That way we can easily monitor if they're calling endpoints excessively and make sure that our alarms don't go off when they did something wrong, but still…

I just connected my garage door opener to Home Assistant by taking apart the remote and wiring the button to a Zigbee relay. They can't stop me, no part of this is connected to their cloud. In any case, smart home stuff should never rely on the cloud. https://i.imgur.com/lNOXdhe.jpg

There is also https://opengarage.io/

For anyone who wants an out of the box, and open source, solution.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#182

Post by michaelmior »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #148
michaelmior wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. Chamberlain doesn't get to authorize people to open your door, but they do get to decide who uses their API. While I think it's a very poor decision, they certainly can decide that any use of their API they don't like is unauthorized. That said, I would love to see legislation that ends this kind of vendor lock-in.

It's true, under our current legal framework, the free market is supposed to allow customers to choose to buy more user-friendly alternatives sold by competitors if they aren't happy that one offering is DRMed to hell and back. In practice, how well does that work?

Often not well of course. I don't think it's reasonable to force manufacturers to allow certain third parties access to their servers. However, I would love to see legislation that requires smart home products to have some reasonable level of local access independent of any servers operated by the manufacturer. This is even better since then you don't get bricked if they decide to shut down the service later.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#183

Post by infecto »

izzydata wrote: post #97
infecto wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats the problem. There are really only two garage door companies in America and they are both terrible from a tech perspective.

It sounds like a prime industry for disruption. Anyone want to start a garage door company?

If I had the capital I would explore it. At least for targeting the replacement market...not sure if you could convince homebuilders to use your product, but maybe it would be not impossible.

I know there are a lot more steps to it but my mind was telling me that the motor mechanism is a solved problem. Could perhaps even buy the barebones parts to assemble locally. The magic or at least what is the most interesting for me is providing the integration module that allows it to 1) connect to the internet or 2) connect to other local devices that can control it. Would possibly require a subscription from the internet route but not even close to the silly $45 a year Chamberlain charges.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#184

Post by ssl-3 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #134
publicmail wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really think it’s DRM. I think it’s because a lot of garage door buttons have a few functionalities, like controlling the lights as well as the door, but it works over two wires. So it probably necessitates some more complicated logic.

This one didn't. It was literally just a featureless button, engineered with intelligence it couldn't possibly need except as a means of locking out third-party hardware.

Even the "dumb" buttons are on a common serial bus with Security+.

I agree that it is annoying in a "It's just a momentary switch! How hard can it be!" sort of way, but it be that way anyhow.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#185

Post by michaelmior »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #152
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, under our current legal framework, the free market is supposed to allow customers to choose to buy more user-friendly alternatives sold by competitors if they aren't happy that one offering is DRMed to hell and back. In practice, how well does that work?

It doesn't in the USA, because antitrust laws are seldom enforced. Hence "inflation" and shit like this.

Antitrust is also difficult to enforce. I would rather see laws that require manufactures to provide a reasonable amount of local control for devices. Aside from avoiding situations like this, it also avoids bricking devices when services are shut down. It also seems perhaps easier to enforce although defining what constitutes a reasonable level of local control could prove difficult.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#186

Post by CamperBob2 »

Kirby64 wrote: post #177
dheera wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but in reality former tenants are statistically unlikely to be criminals -- you probably ran a background check on them prior to them moving in, didn't you? Former tenants could have copied front door keys after all, and probably did for noble reasons like SOs, etc. The garage door remote I modified with the Zigbee relay is a remote I purchased and paired with my rental unit's garage door opener, and then took a…

We’re talking about Airbnb here. I don’t know of any vetting you really do for an Airbnb. And, unlike a key, you can copy a garage door to homelink without do almost any work. Add to that the fact that garages tend to be less covered from a camera perspective (usually there’s a doorbell camera at the door) and it’s a bit of a blind spot for homeowners I’d think.

AirBnB vets users the same way hotels do. When signing up as a tenant, you have to send them a copy of your state ID with photo and provide a third-party payment method. It seems to work well enough for the most part, a few isolated horror stories aside.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#187

Post by polski-g »

michaelmior wrote: post #91
mavamaarten wrote: post #15

"unauthorized users". They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. The company I work for has a policy where we don't block third party clients, as long as they use a uniquely identifiable user agent and API key that we provide to them. That way we can easily monitor if they're calling endpoints excessively and make sure that our alarms don't go off when they did something wrong, but still…

> They are authorized if they are trying to control their own garage door. Chamberlain doesn't get to authorize people to open your door, but they do get to decide who uses their API. While I think it's a very poor decision, they certainly can decide that any use of their API they don't like is unauthorized. That said, I would love to see legislation that ends this kind of vendor lock-in.

The real question is: Why is there a *cloud* API to access a device that is hosted 40 feet from me?

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#188

Post by anonomousename »

wil421 wrote: post #155
drapermache wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have those comments talked about their compatibility with home assistant? I'm done with Chamberlin and their dumb app. I want a one-stop app to control all of my IoT devices, and I don't want it locked into an ecosystem.

Not sure. I’m about done with Apple Home and once I have a free weekend I’ll convert everything to Home Assistant. Tired of Apple Home automation misses with no logs. My wife’s phone won’t connect to our Home and the only solution is to rebuild your Apple Home from scratch.

If you make the switch to home assistant, you can mirror devices you want to control frequently with the HomeKit integration. It’ll be like nothing changed, expect for increased stability and interoperability. You can also add Google Home and Alexa afaik

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#189

Post by brianaker »

cbull wrote: post #164
ChainOfFools wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this, glanced at the site and I like that it's got a motion sensor built into the unit which is convenient. But I wasn't able to tell from an admittedly cursory glance if the opengarage can decrypt the Security+ 2.0 signal that's on the wire in MyQ devices, or if it's just a dry contact switch replacement which will not work for such devices.

It will do Security+ 2.0 with an add-on module (or that was the case several years ago when I got mine). The device has been fantastic, I got mine about 4 years ago and I just never think about it, it's never failed to work (even after power outages). Mine isn't a motion sensor, it's a distance measuring device, it's how it can tell if a car is in the bay or the garage door itself is open (you set the distances in th…

The description on the OpenThings website is misleading, the add-on module is an off the shelf commerical remote that is being shorted in order to operate the door.

The ratgdo device is decoding the line version of the Security+ 2.0 protocol, which gives you state information/etc. They have a page describing what they currently decode:

https://paulwieland.github.io/ratgdo/01_features.html

FWIW The Flipper Zero can decode the wireless version of the Security+ 2.0 protocol.

Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes

#190

Post by josephcsible »

publicmail wrote: post #133
CamperBob2 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention that. I stayed at an AirBnB a while back that I selected precisely because the listing mentioned that a garage was available. It turned out that yes, you could use the garage, but the remote was not provided by the host. So I had to disengage the door and lift it manually, then close it behind me when I left every morning. "Fuck that," I said to myself, as any self-respecting hacker would. "I…

I don’t really think it’s DRM. I think it’s because a lot of garage door buttons have a few functionalities, like controlling the lights as well as the door, but it works over two wires. So it probably necessitates some more complicated logic.

No, it's DRM. On older models, control over auxiliary functions worked by the buttons connecting capacitors of different capacitances across the two wires (the door control itself was still a direct short). This works fine; DRM is indeed the only reason newer models changed it.
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