I HATE MyQ and Security 3.0

Hardware
1

Well, my garage door opener from 1997 finally died. Turns out it was just the capacitor and I could have probably just replaced that. After getting a quote from A1 for $2000!!! They are owned by private equity and charge like it too. Avoid at all costs. I got a reasonable quote of $650 from a locally owned garage door company.

I wanted to avoid Liftmaster/Chamberlain because of the well known MyQ lockout situation. My old Liftmasters were just contact closures so I have a Z-Wave relay with a Z-Wave tilt sensor and I can open close/see state from my dashboard. The Genie options seemed to suck and nobody recommended them and I did find out about Sommers but nobody around me seemed to carry them.

With the ratgdo option I felt like I could handle the Security 2.0 nightmare. The guy installed my two openers today to then tell me these aren’t Security 2.0 these are Security 3.0! Uh oh. I quick checked ratgdo website and found in the FAQ that they don’t support 3.0. Fuck. They shipped them already too. Double fuck. 20% restocking fee…awesome. I asked him if they could pull out these white button POS (Security 3.0 have white buttons on the opener) and get me a 2.0? Nope, none left.

Doing some internet sleuthing I found this option: Smart Garage Door Opener – ThirdReality

Great, we are back to physically pressing a button. Out of stock. Even better.

I was like, if we can’t hack 3.0 then why not hack the physical remote? Turns out someone did.
I went and did some more searching and found: https://www.garadget.com/
I have a 3 button on order and I think I can hook those external wires back up to my Z-Wave relay and be back in business. I’ll let you guys know.

P.S. if anyone was looking for the ratgdo disco with positions sensors, I’ll give them to you at 10% off what I paid so then you can get a discount and I can avoid a 20% restocking fee. I have two of each.

2

I have two garage doors. One door uses a Chamberlain opener (I assume it’s 2.0 since I’ve had it for a few years) and the other uses a Genie opener. the Genie opener I bought about a year after the Chamberlain.

I haven’t had any problems at all from either of them. So I’m not sure what you heard about Genie but I haven’t had a bad experience with it.

And from a HA tie-in perspective I think the Genie opener was easier to get working than the Chamberlain due exactly to the fact of the security 2.0 situation.

For the Genie I was able to use my existing “fake-finger-push-a-button-on-the-wall” zwave dry contact relay and a tilt sensor setup that I had on my 20 year old opener.

And for the Chamberlain I had to buy a spare remote from Home Depot and solder in a “fake-finger-push-a-button-on-the-remote” dry contact relay across the remote pushbutton terminals. Then I stuck the remote/relay combo in the ceiling of the garage. then of course I had to also use a sensor for the door position.

So far both setups have been working great.

3

Agree about Genie - mine’s been great. I had to replace my opener ~5 years ago, and asked the dude for the most bare-bones opener he had in the truck, and so up went my model 2128. I control it with a Zen16 and wired (dumb) reed sensors.

No issues at all with that Genie (single-door for 2 bays), and a detached garage in Minnesota is a challenging environment for any opener - it’s never skipped a beat.

4

When I had to replace my garage door opener, without even trying, I knew that MyQ was not for me. And like @finity and @Hydro130, out came my trusty soldering iron and a couple of wires to hook to my Insteon I/O module.

I do like have the thermometer on the switch, though. :wink: