I’ve been using the regular myq “internet gateway” (828LM) for several years and as most of us know the regular myq integration uses its cloud api, cloud polling, to get the entities setup. It has always been pretty slow and has had plenty of issues as people have noticed. Even if the API stabilizes, its still cloud polling. So I went looking for another solution and I hadn’t read for sure if this would give me full local control while STILL using the myq in the garage doors and not adding any relays or sensors or anything else. And MyQ doesn’t get to snoop or sell data about when I use my garage doors!!!
The answer lies in the Liftmaster 819LMB MyQ home bridge. I set it up, (and after all my instructions below…) blocked it from talking to the internet at my firewall, and it works! Local control! (The myq app stopped working as you would expect, no status data flowed out, nothing).
A warning about this device that I have come to learn though. Power cycling it can cause it to just loose its brain and not connect to wifi for a long time… and you will see a blue blinking light. If you leave it alone for like an hour or more, it usually comes back online and works fine. I have seen reviews of people who think it needs fully reset and I can see why it gets frustrating. Best to keep it powered and if you have to restart it, give it a couple hours before you start to worry. No idea what it could be doing… but just FYI. I will be keeping mine on a battery backup/UPS.
So the setup is a little annoying and I saw some instructions recently here that ended up not being very helpful. (they mentioned using myqservices.com and such, but that site doesn’t seem to do anything anymore.). So to help out, here are my instructions.
If you already have myq setup with doors or devices, just remove those from myq first. Clean slate in myq app. Remove them from homekit if you have that setup somehow (like with “homekit” integration. you can re-expose them again soon, but this is mostly to not confuse all your entities in HA, it wont break anything)
Also… if your garage doors are MyQ and Wifi, you should reset/clear wifi settings. WiFi settings are cleared by holding the rectangular button on the opener between the up and down triangular buttons for 6 seconds and will beep once initially, followed by three consecutive at six seconds. https://support.partner.liftmaster.com/s/article/How-to-clear-the-Wi-Fi-settings-on-MyQ-Wi-Fi-product
Power up the 819LMB somewhere with decent wifi coverage and near your garage doors. Mine is setup in a walk out basement between all 3 of my garage doors, two in the front and a golf cart garage in the back, it has good coverage.
You should see a blinking blue light. If you don’t, just hold the gear button for about 10 seconds and it will start blinking blue.
Use your phone, get the myq app (im using iOS). Just add device and follow the wizard. When looking for the device, you need to make sure you discover it, don’t click on “Add new” and add it by the serial number, that wont work. Let it discover it (i think its bluetooth). It will ask to take a screenshot of your pairing code, mine had a sticker with it and the app uses camera to capture it.
It will ask you to add it to a homekit home, go ahead and add it to an existing home or make a new one, either is fine. (it wont require reseting your homekit house or anything, no worries)
Go and pair your garage doors with it, you want everything paired before you go to the next step (otherwise I don’t know how you get HA homekit controller integration to discover things later, only seems to do it on first config)
Now you should see all your doors in the myq app, and home app.
Now, in the Home app, click on the house icon, home settings, hubs and find the new myq bridge/hub and remove it from the house. This unpairs it from your homekit/house and allows it to be discovered by the “homekit controller” integration.
Go to integrations in HA and add “Homekit Controller” and it should find the device and all the doors.
And just a note to clarify something basic, but I am just learning this stuff…
The “Homekit Controller” pairing with the 819LMB lets you control the garage doors paired to it, using homekit protocol over your local ip network from home assistant, but it doesn’t mean you are forced into using the homekit app or siri or anything else at all, its not using that for its control… nothing hits icloud or anything. You don’t need any apple hardware.
If you then also add the “Homekit” integration, you create a new homekit bridge and that can be added to your homekit home. That integration exposes compatible home assistant entities to your homekit home, including the garage doors if you want. You certainly don’t have to expose your garage doors in homekit. You won’t see them at all in apple home if you skip using “Homekit” integration or don’t expose them with it, but that is fine if you don’t use it.
If you want to use homekit/siri outside your network, then you need a homekit “hub” which is an apple tv, homepod or newer ipad. Then it connects to icloud or whatever to make it work outside your LAN.
Hope that clears it up a little. (I am just learning this stuff myself, so please point out if I got something wrong here)
I did the same a while ago. OP’s procedures are correct. Thumbs up.
My complains to this 819LMB is that the onboarding procedures (at least back when I did this) are/were poorly designed and needlessly complex - too many stupid hoops you would have to jump through.
And it is fragile. There were blackout events to my place, and in multiple cases I had to start from scratch. The procedures are not impossibly difficult, but enough for me to complain.
Not being in the iThing infrastructure, I wonder if there are similar ways to do this under other HA platforms (Google Home, “She who shall not be named”, SmartThings…)
It shouldn’t actually matter. Your home assistant “homekit controller” integration will speak homekit protocol over your network/wifi to it and it then talks myq to your garage doors. You don’t need any apple hardware and anything apple to do this (post initial setup which still, is all just software). Like I mentioned in my second post, you can skip the “homekit” integration part and nothing is exposed to homekit/home things.
I ended up having to do one additional step; I had to reset the WiFi settings on each opener (mine have WiFi and MyQ capability built into the opener). Trying this before resetting WiFi resulted in strange behavior. The opener would flash its light during pairing to the Home Bridge, appearing successful, but would not proceed in the MyQ app and would time out.
Those that still use it, how is the reliability? I plan to use it with two GDO’s with the yellow button with blocked internet. Read a few threads that it gets confused and doesn’t connect to wifi if there is a power outage and it can’t call home.
I assume HA can control both GDO’s completely locally with one home bridge?
I want the beeping when closed remotely i.e kids.
Does HA know the opened and closed status without additional sensors?
I actually setup a shelly1 but was sad to see it my GDO has the yellow button and if I need to get a dry contact button might as well just get this.
I still use it. It works well but I did have to unblock the myq stuff at the firewall. It seems to not behave well if I keep it blocked. Kindof a bummer because I really don’t want any cloud dependency, but ill settle for the better performance and reliability.
Regarding power outage. I keep my 819LMB on a battery backup. My network, access points, switches are also all on backup power. Even the garage door openers have batteries and work without grid power… but I also have an automatic standby generator on my house so I have everything powered within a minute of loosing grid power. If it looses power, just wait like two hours… it should start working again. It is a bit weird but it will eventually come back. I strongly recommend backup power.
I only have one 819LMB controlling three garage doors. HA does know open, closed, closing, blocked, etc so you can see when the door is closing and all the other states. No additional sensors or hardware.
I’ve had this setup for about a month now and its been great, it lives on my dead VLAN with static IP and no DNS. No issues with it connecting to my network, I put it next to my access point and not in the garage.
I use this with two GDOs and oddly one is solid and rarely goes “unavailable” in HA while the other one goes “unavailable” for 1 minute every hour. I did temporarily move it around and even put it in the garage but it just doesn’t help and can’t really figure out why one GDO is fine but not the other.
I’ve read LED bulbs cause interference with the keypad or remote so I’m going to install CFL bulbs and see if that helps at all with it going “unavailable”.
Its kinda annoying, if its “unavailable” while I’m not at home and leave the door open.
I spent a few months with my doors being unavailable 80% of the time. Once I allowed the bridge to have internet access they’re available 100% of the time. Not ideal, but at least now I get dependable local control.
I was blocking at the firewall so the controller did have the ability to resolve DNS. I’m going to try without DNS next and see if that’ll allow it be be offline without being unavailable.
Yes, I think you are correct. It is still ‘local’ control in that the commands are local and the response is fast. It doesn’t seem to relay to the cloud since its fast to respond, but its still doing something and calling home. I swear it worked fine when I first set it up and blocked it, but now I have the same behavior. I have to allow it to call home. Kinda sucks, but it is still way better than the cloud polling integration.
Hi since myq is now supported in Tesla I wish to add myq to my setup. Is it possible to control a Home Assistant Cover (made with whatever manufacturer like opengarage) and myq?
ratgdo is for anyone who wants true local control of their Security + 2.0 garage door. It’s an ESP8266 shield + firmware for controlling your door opener through a hardwired connection.
It integrates via MQTT and has Home Assistant Auto Discovery.
