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Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API

home-assistant.io

641–650 of 655 posts

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

#641
post #179

> We understand that this impacts a small percentage of users, ... Wow, what a contemptuous statement. I have news for you, Chamberlain Group. You are not only alienating, being hostile and losing a "Small percentage of users" (most companies would prefer to call them "valued customers", but I get it). You are causing an enormous permanent damage to your own brand.

As much as I want this to be true I kinda doubt it. People who install and configure home assistant are far and away niche users. Almost everyone with one of their products will just use a physical clicker or pair it with their car directly.

I use HA, however I do not have it tied to my Garage door, and have no plans to do so.

I am in the market for a new opener.. I just need the physical clicker.

I will not be buying one from this brand, as even if I do not need the HA functionality I no longer trust them as a company.

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

#642
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…

>>MyQ is the core/required integration component for Amazon Key in-garage delivery,

I see several other vendors / openers on the Amazon page for this service besides MyQ.

Genie being one of them, which seems to also support HA just fine

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

#643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd that the standard policy is to leave packages unattended in any form in the first place . This is another one of those things that is not standard globally. E.g for us in South Africa, this would be unthinkable, regardless of how much time it saves the delivery company. The only time a parcel is left at the door is when it's UberEats. Otherwise delivery is rescheduled if we don't physically collect parc…

Here in France that would be unthinkable, too. But the US still seems to have some remnants of a high trust society, which has been only a temporary thing in many places, if at all. Not having such a society adds frictions in all kind of interactions. In the end, that means cost. I can understand why people and company try to shift that cost when it comes up in areas where it wasn't present beforehand.

> But the US still seems to have some remnants of a high trust society

It varies greatly depending on where you live. My sister lives in suburban Maryland, and leaving a package outside on a porch is just no big deal. The probability that it gets stolen is actually ridiculously low. In this case the high trust is completely warranted.

I live in San Francisco, and if a delivery person ever leaves a package outside, it's always a scramble to either get there to take it in, or find a neighbor who can do it for you. (I live in a 4-unit condo building, so we all try to look out for each other's packages when this happens.) It's just bizarre to me that delivery people aren't specifically instructed to never leave packages outside here. I suspect they may be, but they're overworked and don't want to have to add yet another package to their delivery schedule for the next day. And/or they may be evaluated on number of completed deliveries, no idea.

(On the flip side, there are some neighborhoods in SF where it's ok for a package to sit on a doorstep for a while. Not many, but... they exist.)

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

#644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in France that would be unthinkable, too. But the US still seems to have some remnants of a high trust society, which has been only a temporary thing in many places, if at all. Not having such a society adds frictions in all kind of interactions. In the end, that means cost. I can understand why people and company try to shift that cost when it comes up in areas where it wasn't present beforehand.

In the US if a package is not left at the door you either have to wait an unknowable amount of time for another attempt, or you'd have to go to a facility to pick it up. It's difficult to figure out exactly where the facilities are and you're not guaranteed the package won't still be on the original truck or on a new one. The facilities may only be open during the day, while you're at work. Additionally, it's common…

> In the US if a package is not left at the door you either have to wait an unknowable amount of time for another attempt

It's not unknowable; FedEx and UPS at least will reattempt delivery every day for a certain number of days before giving up. At least that's the case in urban and suburban environments. Maybe you live somewhere rural where their policy is less clear?

> It's difficult to figure out exactly where the facilities are

No it's not. The tag they leave behind will often tell you, or you can enter the tracking number online and it'll tell you there. And usually it's the same place every time, so once you figure it out, you're good for future packages.

> and you're not guaranteed the package won't still be on the original truck or on a new one

This is the annoying thing. It's never clear when the package will actually get back to the facility (after they failed to deliver it to you), so you don't actually know if it'll be there when you show up. Many many years ago it was a simple matter of giving them a call, but nowadays you end up in customer support / phone menu hell, and it's incredibly difficult to talk to someone who is actually physically present at the facility.

> The main reason we are cool with deliveries being left on the porch isn't that we trust our neighbors, it's that the alternative is so much worse.

I'm absolutely not cool with this. I trust my neighbors just fine, but I don't trust all the random people who might be walking around, specifically looking for packages to steal.

I'd much rather have to drive over to a facility to pick up the package, or just wait until the next day for another delivery attempt, but most delivery drivers don't give me that choice.

If the package does get stolen (incredibly likely, if it's left outside), I'll usually have to wait several days for the merchant to ship a new one (because they figure it's possible it wasn't stolen, and want me to wait and see if it still gets delivered in a day or two). And then I have to wait for another shipping-time cycle.

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

#645

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…

Thanks for Lockitron, I still use it! Probably one of the few. At least Chamberlain has kept it running, which honestly I'm surprised at. I have been looking at other ones, and with this news I think it's time to do that.

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

#646
post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US if a package is not left at the door you either have to wait an unknowable amount of time for another attempt, or you'd have to go to a facility to pick it up. It's difficult to figure out exactly where the facilities are and you're not guaranteed the package won't still be on the original truck or on a new one. The facilities may only be open during the day, while you're at work. Additionally, it's common…

> In the US if a package is not left at the door you either have to wait an unknowable amount of time for another attempt It's not unknowable; FedEx and UPS at least will reattempt delivery every day for a certain number of days before giving up. At least that's the case in urban and suburban environments. Maybe you live somewhere rural where their policy is less clear? > It's difficult to figure out exactly where th…

> FedEx and UPS at least will reattempt delivery every day for a certain number of days before giving up

They claim this, but my experience is that it's not true. VERY VERY often, it will be multiple days or up to a week before they attempt again. Sometimes they never attempt again, and a week or more later I get the notification that it's available to pick up at their depot. It's certainly not consistent enough to rely on.

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

#648
post #617
post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're ubiquitous, but few prefer them over the convenience of delivery to the doorstep. Buyers are never responsible for missing packages so there's little incentive to use lockers unless you're buying a secret gift or live in a very sketchy neighborhood or your home is so far from the warehouses that same-day delivery is only available at the locker

> They're ubiquitous, but few prefer them over the convenience of delivery to the doorstep. Buyers are never responsible for missing packages so there's little incentive to use lockers unless you're buying a secret gift or live in a very sketchy neighborhood or your home is so far from the warehouses that same-day delivery is only available at the locker Then why so much effort is needed to stop package theft to the…

I gave several reasons why someone would want garage delivery. Services like walmart InHome are fairly common in the US. Consumers are willing to pay extra for the service and retailers like not having to refund stolen packages in sketchy neighborhoods

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

#649
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the above were not true, at that point you're back to an internet enabled smart home device system Home Assistant Cloud is essentially a TCP-level proxy (IOW Nabu Casa sees jack squat): > The remote UI encrypts all communication between your browser and your local instance. Encryption is provided by a Let’s Encrypt certificate. Under the hood, your local Home Assistant instance is connected to one of our cu…

Yeah so this is why I said "no way for the typical consumer to have a product experience like this" because what you're saying is true, but not something an individual can rely on. Typical consumers have no way of ensuring their UI is, in fact, encrypting the data and not farming it out. They cannot verify the source code themselves, because they don't have the technical skill set they'd need to do so (nor, frankly,…

> a consumer has to trust a third party who may have incentives that don't align with their own

That's true for literally anything, not just IoT security and privacy. I mean, even for highly technical users, one can't do everything from scratch, nor even check and control every single aspect: you gotta trust the the computer hardware or OS you're using isn't backdoored, you gotta trust the people that built the place you live in didn't put half the rebar actually needed or wired the whole thing backwards or with thinner-than-required wires, you gotta trust that the food you eat isn't going to make you sick...

Same for HASS, one could delegate trust to a specialist that would install a HA Green or Yellow box for them, just as they do for electrical wiring. HA is only "third party" because the IoT place lacks standards but is in essence no different than wiring stuff from different vendors, where "myriads of decentralised solutions" exist only because of standards, and for which decentralisation essentially means everyone is a third party to everyone else.

So I don't think dismissing HASS as third party is fair, and wiring IoT with virtual wires is no different than wiring a breaker box. If you don't know how to do it it can be dangerous, and so you delegate and trust someone to do their job properly.

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

#650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame your installer for recommending it. I've had a myQ opener since 2015 and it's been rock solid... it has been the most reliable home automation product I have ever owned, until now.

I don’t, and would happily use that installer again. =) But unless you give feedback on how the choices are working out how can you expect them to know and have a better choice next time? (Genie, is what I heard for the future… I’ll have to check further when/if it becomes relevant)

Yep, fair enough. Good feedback for sure.
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