As I understand, this is _after_ they explicitly removed support for homekit/android's equivalent?
I just don't get this behaviour
Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
151–160 of 191 posts
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#152Earlier 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?
It doesn't in the USA, because antitrust laws are seldom enforced.
Hence "inflation" and shit like this.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's when I found that they actually DRM'ed the button. The usual pair of wires was there, but I couldn't open the door by simply shorting them together. Oof. That's awful, but put a servo above the button that physically hits the button. Analog loopholes are immune to DRM.
As the DRM arms race continue, in the next model the button will be a fingerprint reader. To make sure you're not cheating, you can only use the reader in the precise moment an ad you have to watch will tell you so. Of course, even then you will have to watch the ad till completion before the button really does anything.
Oh, and before you think you are smart and could just replace the fingerprint reader with an Arduino - everything will be using cryptographic hardware attestation, oh so nicely pioneered by Apple so many years before, to make sure all hardware components are authorized to work together.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#154Earlier 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 law doesn't help when "fucking over the customer" is a local minimum for the whole market. Everyone will independently arrive at the "solution", and outcompete those who won't.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#155The Ars comments recommend Ratgo and Messo. Ratgo for a WiFi board that connects directly to the garage doors electrical and Messo is another cheap HomeKit option from Amazon. https://paulwieland.github.io/ratgdo/
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.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#156Being subjected to banner ads in the app you're forced to use to interact with your garage door is only a few steps away from "watch this 30 second video before we open your door, or subscribe to MyQ+ for $49/yr for an ad-free experience!"
Just looked at mine (I rarely use the app), it's now got an ad on top but the screen is otherwise as before. No need to scroll.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#157Earlier 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…
> This is only going to get worse. Manual operation seems perfectly understandable in this context. Odds of some AirBnB driving off accidentally with the remote approach 100%.
Honestly, a bigger worry imo is cars that have something like homelink. You can copy a garage door opener, and basically give yourself a garage door opener access whenever you want. I did this accidentally to an old rental house I lived in. When I moved out later I drove by one time and … turns out the homelink still worked. For a criminal, it’d be a very easy way to get back in without any trace.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#158Knowing someone involved with the Chamberlain technology stack, it sounds like certain users had reverse engineered the API and suddenly caused a DDOS on the Chamberlain cloud with their requests. This is a cloud service with real costs. Chamberlain has a responsibility to maintain access for its users. I can’t speak for Chamberlain, but this reaction seems reasonable.
I know this isn't a correct answer to the overall problem, but holy shit, just how much cloud resources could you possibly need to support a garage door opener? This feels like a "top end of the free tier of some PaaS" kind of usage. 0.2% of their userbase doing a cloud poll every 30 seconds or so is not a DDoS, it's a small caching issue.
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#159I'm planning to upgrade my old garage door openers in teh upcoming months, and this very nicely just pruned my decision tree — all the Chamberlain Group garage door opener options are off the list.
HN just made my life a bit easier and better — Thanks!
Re: Chamberlain blocks smart garage door opener from working with smart homes
#160Knowing someone involved with the Chamberlain technology stack, it sounds like certain users had reverse engineered the API and suddenly caused a DDOS on the Chamberlain cloud with their requests. This is a cloud service with real costs. Chamberlain has a responsibility to maintain access for its users. I can’t speak for Chamberlain, but this reaction seems reasonable.
I know this isn't a correct answer to the overall problem, but holy shit, just how much cloud resources could you possibly need to support a garage door opener ? This feels like a "top end of the free tier of some PaaS" kind of usage. 0.2% of their userbase doing a cloud poll every 30 seconds or so is not a DDoS, it's a small caching issue.
I guess when you’re probably talking about millions of customers, it depends on what services they offer.
Although when the API is exposed to unfiltered external requests, I think the answer is no amount of cloud services is enough.