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.
