Check out opengarage.io. I have it and it’s great. AFAIR, it existed before MyQ came to life.
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Saw the writing on the wall a bit ago. My RatGDO devices (two) are actually on the way now and I realized I didn’t order a third, so I got that one coming. Going forward I’ll never buy another Chamberlain product again. They said the service was available and I used it, I was told it would work with my home automation and it’s never been right even with Google. These guys are dishonest and greedy. I can’t work with a company I can’t trust for the long haul. I’m glad we have some options but I’ll never buy another one of their products again and I’m going to start looking for alternatives that I can install in my home. I never liked those openers anway and maybe now I can get some with real IoT functionality instead of this “let’s pretend” garbage. Best of luck Chaimberlain.
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I think at the moment they’re goal is to get you used to the convenience and luxury of having the ability to monitor your garage from their handy app. They wanna sell you ancillary products like cameras (farewell Amazon Key drop off) and “security” stuff but it’s all run through their ecosystem which means it’s cloud dependent and when the shareholders aren’t making enough and the CEO’s baby girl needs a new pony, they’ll tack on a $5 mo fee to pay for that; and you’ll do it because they’ve got you and you don’t have another option. We gotta get away from these guys.
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Not without breaking every accessory including their own.
Even if the garage door opener’s firmware could be updated, the wired door opener on the wall can’t and that’s what ratgdo emulates.
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Can the Ratgdo be used in conjunction/parallel with the standard wall control panel or is it only one or the other?
Also does anyone know if Ratgdo works with other manufacturers (ie Genie) or only Chamberlain/Liftmaster?
Ads and subscriptions. The MYQ app now displays ads for their products when you control the door. I had IFTTT working with MYQ previously (which already charges their own subscription by the way), and as I posted below, when this all happened with the blockage, the IFTTT myq integration stopped working as well.
When I went to figure out why, for the myq IFTTT integration to work now I would have to pay an additional $45 a year "premium services subsription. MYQ also has a subscription for Tesla control for the same price. After this, I cancelled IFTTT as it was now useless if I would have to pay them and other parties to use their service.
So that is where the company is going - as far as tracking/data profits, I installed my Ratgdo yesterday, which works great for local control, and I would also highly recomend it. As soon as I got it working, I uninstalled the MYQ app and unplugged their gateway. No reason to give them access to any additional data on my garage door usage for “revenue streams”. The company has shown what they really care about - and that is money.
As a former Wink user that went through this same subscription nonsense before, it is an important lesson on why local control is best - I have been slowly ripping out any cloud connected device over the past few years - all TUYA devices have been reflashed with Tasmota and other smart plugs/switches have been replaced with local zigbee or zwave solutions. There is not much left in my smart home that is cloud connected other then my Alexa’s, ring door bell, and a couple blink cameras. Even those have days likely numbered - I am closely watching the “year of the voice” progress and would love to replace the Alexas some day with a local solution as well.
I am very thankful to everyone on this Home Assistant project for the work they have done to allow things to keep working, continuously get better, and not be subject to random shutdowns of API’s or sudden new fees from other cloud connected services.
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The new 2.5 board offers some genie compatibility, but honestly doesn’t seem to offer much advantage over other existing genie solutions. It can give obstruction status, but requires some additional electronics.
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I can personally confirm yes - the wall controller and ratgdo both work for door control together. I can open the door with one, stop it with the other, no issues.
There is a “dry contact” option that appears to allow it to universally work with other manufacturers
https://paulwieland.github.io/ratgdo/01_features.html
But the ratgdo shines for its communication with chamberlain/liftmaster devices over their security protocols. As the other poster noted, for other garage door openers, it looks like it would require limit switches, so not sure if other solutions for different doors would be cheaper/better options.
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“and locking out wired remotes.” You meant to say, “locking out wireless remotes.”
thanks for the replies.
Right now I’m using my tried and true hacked dry-contacts-soldered-across-the-button-of-a-remote solution for both brands (I have one of each). And both doors have their stand-alone position sensors as well.
The ratgdo sounds good but I was wondering if the benefits I would gain are worth the extra cost since what I have now has been working for years.
It might give a bit more functionality for Chamberlain (that I likely wouldn’t use tho) but it sounds like for Genie there isn’t much advantage.
With the schematics offered above I may just try to DIY my own Ratgdo for the Chamberlain at some point. The biggest downside with my current solution (if you can call it that) is needing to change the remote batteries every few months. Not really a major thing but it means I have to get a ladder out to pull the remote out of its hidey-hole. A powered solution would solve that.
For genie, you should be able to directly connect to the wall button terminals on the opener. No remote should be needed. It would be a 5 minute fix to avoid one battery.
I personally think ratgdo’s extra functionality is well worth the cost and would replace any other solution in an instant.
It almost makes me consider replacing my genie openers just to use ratgdo.
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true. I just haven’t taken the time to dig into the electronics of the wall controller yet. The remote was easy to take with me and pull apart as I get time.
The nicest things I like with it over a dry contact solution are:
1- real time status of not just open/closed, but also “opening” and “closing” status are reported in real time. I have a detached garage and I’ve already changed an automation for outside lights to now turn on at night as soon as the door is “opening” versus open. The lights took awhile to turn on before as I would have to wait for the door to fully open, then wait for the myq cloud. Before, the lights usually weren’t even on until I was already at the garage. Now, as soon as I start opening the door (via wall switch, remote, or home assistant) the lights sense “opening” and immediately turn on, and don’t wait for the door to be fully open.
2- Control of the garage light - you can independently turn on and off the garage light now as a separate entity.
3- Obstruction feedback - the added benefit of knowing if there is an obstruction. I haven’t changed automations yet on this but plan to, so I can get better alerts ahead of time if the door is blocked. I’ve always had an automation that automatically closes the door when no one is at the house, but it would be nice to add an automation that checks for a blockage when we are getting ready to leave versus it being too late when we are already gone and the door can’t close.
If you can build your own, I would say definitely worth it. Even buying the ratgdo might be worth it to take advantage of the additional entities and real time door position sensing over the dry contact w/ remote solution.
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I’ll say this community is great. I absolutely love home assistant and what it’s grown into over the years. And the fact that we’re able to collectively dance around MyQ’s cannon fodder like this. Not only has the community found many ways to completely circumvent their money grab, but the RatGDO has also unlocked features for automation superior to what MyQ themselves provided. Now I can disable garage door remote functionality at night when my wife and I are asleep or both away from the house. And no longer does my ability to control my GDO’s through my phone depend on my internet connection and a third party’s ability to keep their servers functioning properly. Now our garage doors are actually more secure, as opposed to MyQ’s lie that their changes were for the sake of “security”
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For Genie, you don’t need to mess with the wall controller itself.
Connect the relay leads to the same terminals on the opener the wall controller is wired to. Both the wall controller and relay can be connected simultaneously to the same terminals.
hmmm…interesting.
My understanding was that even the wall console was “smart” and that a dry contact relay wired in parallel to that wall console wouldn’t work since it didn’t generate the security code functionality of the wall console.
That was the way my old GDO worked (contact in parallel with the wall button) but I didn’t think that would work with the latest GDO controllers so I never tried it.
Just curious because I don’t have that option - is that only in the ESP version of ratgdo (I’m using the MQTT version) or is that just an extra option/feature of the opener itself that is not available on all chamberlain/liftmaster doors?
Update:
I found the option by looking at mqtt explorer and publishing commands directly to mqtt- it just didn’t create an unlock/lock entity like the others automatically for me
True for LM/Chamberlain. To my knowledge all genies still work the “old” way. Easy enough to test, short the contacts with a scrap of wire, or really anything conductive, screwdriver, pliers, etc.
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If this change only impacts a “small percentage of users” how will it “improve the performance and reliability of MyQ”?
Are they suggesting this “small percentage” has huge impact on their services? More likely they’re just talking out of the side of their mouths…
That repo seems to suggest that the ratgdo person(s) is not abiding by open source standards. Is that correct? If so, that’s not good.