[HN Gopher] Installed an open source garage door opener, and I'm...
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Installed an open source garage door opener, and I'm loving it
Author : ChumpGPT
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-11-15 20:06 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I helped my friend instal one of these closed source ones and I
| never saw the point. They shut down their integration with his
| Alexa and other automations later which was amusing, but it kind
| of just showed off the fact that, yeah, you pretty much push the
| button in your car or the button inside your garage or on the
| keypad outside your garage and that's pretty much all you ever do
| with a garage door so this smart home stuff doesn't really add
| much.
| oslem wrote:
| One thing I like about them is the peace of mind it brings. On
| the very rare occasion that I somehow forget to close my garage
| when I leave (maybe I'm in a rush and the button in my car
| didn't register), it's nice to be able to close the door
| remotely.
| edderkopp wrote:
| You can also open the garage door remotely for someone, e.g.
| your kid who wants to take out their bike, or a person who was
| supposed to pick something up from you but you couldn't be at
| home.
| atoav wrote:
| I don't even have a garage, but I run the media tech at German
| university. I wouldn't care for Alexa, but having actual remote
| control (and monitoring) over things can be incredibly useful.
| Not _that_ useful that you have to have it at any cost, but
| still useful.
| asveikau wrote:
| My opener broke a few months ago, maybe 10+ year old model that I
| previously had on zwave via GoControl.
|
| I just got a cheap homedepot Chamberlain to replace it and got
| ratgdo. Works much better than my old zwave solution.
| qwerpy wrote:
| OpenGarage is great. I have an overcomplicated system that goes
| from iPhone widget -> Apple Home -> Home bridge to Home Assistant
| -> Home Assistant -> OpenGarage, but it has worked great for the
| past few years. I could probably cut out the Apple-dependent
| steps with some more effort.
|
| Takes me 2 seconds to pick up my phone, swipe to the widget
| screen, and hit the garage button. Within 1 second, the garage
| door opens/closes.
| lilyball wrote:
| Why are you using Homebridge to talk to Home Assistant? It has
| a built-in integration to expose devices to HomeKit.
| NickM wrote:
| I just got new garage doors installed with new openers, and I saw
| that the openers support myQ, and that my car does too, and I
| thought "sweet, I'll be able to open and close the garage from my
| car without any extra hardware".
|
| Turns out myQ charges a subscription fee for the privilege of
| using this feature.
|
| I could install an opener like this one, but it still wouldn't
| solve the in-car integration side of things. Anyone know of any
| clever workarounds for this? Seems like maybe I could MITM the
| myQ service since my car and garage would both be on the same
| WiFi when I'm home, but I don't know if there are OSS
| replacements for the myQ server software.
| tkems wrote:
| From what I've read, myQ is pretty locked down and doesn't
| support local control (outside of a HomeKit device that I think
| is no longer supported).
|
| I would guess that the cert pinning would prevent such MITM
| attack, but I could be wrong. I'm not a huge fan of Chamberlain
| and myQ since they are so against 3rd party use of their
| products [0].
|
| [0] https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2023/11/06/removal-of-
| myq...
| cyberax wrote:
| You can just buy a RATGDO device and use it with your opener!
|
| https://paulwieland.github.io/ratgdo/
|
| It's a reverse-engineered device that you can attach to the
| opener. It works perfectly, and provides local control and
| monitoring.
|
| You can also use it alongside the official myQ client, if you
| want to use in-garage delivery from Amazon.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I don't know how anyone could stand to work at Chamberlain.
| Getting rid of the previous HomeKit integration they
| supported, basically for no good reason other than greed, is
| corporate brained idiocy.
| metadat wrote:
| +1, ratgdo is amazing.
|
| A bit of fiddling to get it properly flashed and configured,
| and ever since it's worked flawlessly with HA.
|
| MyQ is nice, especially with the account management and easy
| door status viewing from your smartphone anywhere at any
| time. But I'm not up for the enshittified exorbitant rent-
| seeking subscription fee and needlessly closed API interface.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I bought a https://www.meross.com/en-gc/smart-garage-door-
| opener/garage...
|
| Apparently you can hijack the mqtt setup and manage it
| locally (I mostly wanted to know if I forgot to close the
| door, so I'm pretty okay with the Meross app).
|
| I guess it doesn't have the built in support for the
| obfuscated protocol, my opener is just a dry contact so I
| didn't need to look into it.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I also got a Meross garage door opener, primarily so the
| kids could get in and out of the house without having to
| shuffle our two physical clickers around every day
| (depending on who would be home first).
|
| My wife commented that it's the only useful technology I've
| ever implemented.
|
| Like you, and haven't yet done the "make it work locally"
| hijack thing yet - but I haven't needed to because it works
| well.
|
| Knowing that the door has been left up has also come in
| handy a couple of times. Also been able to open the garage
| door to let people into the house to feed the pets while
| we're away.
|
| Only issue I had is that the WiFi range on the single unit
| is woeful. I had to put a WiFi repeater within the garage
| for it to see the signal.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yeah, the wifi connection on my setup is flaky. Not an
| attached garage though, a good distance from my router,
| with cinder block walls.
| lowkj wrote:
| If you use Apple CarPlay, any garage door opener you have will
| appear on your dashboard when you are close to it. No
| subscription, no need for device to have internet access. Not
| exactly the same as it's not using hardware in your car and
| you'll need your phone, but this works nicely for me.
| gsharma wrote:
| Probably this is why MyQ/Chamberlin doesn't support HomeKit.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| GitHub: https://github.com/opengarage
|
| Website: https://opengarage.io/
|
| Looks to be related, opensprinkler:
| https://github.com/opensprinkler
| JustinAiken wrote:
| I have this and OpenSprinkler in my house, and love them both.
|
| Hated myQ even before it went subscription.
| teilo wrote:
| I use Z-Wave for everything. I looked into Home Assistant, but
| went with a Hubitat C8 Pro hub bridged to HomeKit on my Apple TV.
| A Z-wave multi-relay and tilt sensor kit is under $100, and just
| works.
|
| Home Assistant is more flexible, and has nicer dashboards, but
| it's also way more of a PITA to get everything working
| consistently. Hubitat, OTOH, has just worked, with very little
| tinkering. I had some issues early on with it running slow, but
| later firmwares resolved all such issues.
| crimsonnoodle58 wrote:
| Another local-only alternative; Athom have a pre-flashed ESPHome
| Garage Door opener which has a reed switch for determining
| whether the door is closed. Works flawlessly for me, and less
| than half the price.
|
| https://www.athom.tech/blank-1/garage-door-opener-for-esphom...
| XorNot wrote:
| I have this one and use it with my Chamberlain opener. You just
| wire it to button trigger and stick the rees switch on the
| door. It works great.
| pbnjay wrote:
| I have a variety of Shelly 1 devices in my house, one of which is
| on the oldschool Garage Door opener (with a reed switch for
| open/close tracking) - Very inexpensive, flexible for other
| applications, and works with HA etc.
|
| https://us.shelly.com/products/shelly-1-gen3
| ahaucnx wrote:
| It's great to see more and more open source hardware products
| that work seamlessly with home assistant.
|
| Home assistant is getting more and more user friendly and these
| open IoT devices also improve significantly.
|
| I am quite positive that there will be an "alternative" ecosystem
| to proprietary subscription locking in ones.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm pretty much all in on ESPHome in my house. Have all the
| lights, air conditioners and anything else that might be left on
| wired up.
|
| Walking out my front door I hit "lights off" and "AC off" on my
| phone and everything turns off.
|
| If my phone drops off home wifi for over an hour inger
| notifications if I've left the garage door open (and can close it
| remotely).
|
| Open source IoT is great.
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