The Current State of MyQ - From the codeowner

So - I use home automation because I have ALS and am in an electric wheelchair. Being able to control things via my phone or iPad allows me to do so with my eyes.

Is there any solution available for someone like me? That can’t buy one of these devices and install it due to my disability? Or am I now just shit out of luck? Any feedback is welcome. Thanks!

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This right here is why I never went with MyQ in the first place. When I first read about the company and how they managed MyQ, it was clear they never wanted to support anyone that could get around their monthly/yearly payment plan. I don’t remember what exactly led me down that path, it may have been a blog or article. Regardless, the intentions were clear to me back when I first set up my garage door opener in 2018ish.

This should be a clear reminder to people that everyone should spend time researching a product before impulse buying something.

Outside that, I went with a DIY solution. At the time, I did not own a soldering gun. I had never soldered anything in my life. I’m not an electrical engineer either, but I do know how a small push button works. I ordered a soldering gun (this got me into the DIY world), a second door opener, some low voltage 18gauge wire, and a zwave relay (MimoLite). I soldered directly to the 2 leads on the button, under the plastic case and connected those wires to the relay. Then I just wired the garage door opener up like any other opener, and hid it directly above the unit. I haven’t touched this solution in 5 years, it still works via zwave. If you go the esphome route (or ratgdo), I’d wager it’d still work without any need to change it.

My point here is, yes you can do the DIY route. It’s not hard at all and you don’t need to be an expert solderer.

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That’s a tough one and unfortunately you’re not the first person I have heard with that same problem. Accessibility matters and decisions like this by myq hurt a lot of people.

As far as I see it, you have a few options,

There is a myq homebridge hub - but it is discontinued and you can only buy it on site like ebay and I heard it could be a pain.

Even if there was a fully wireless option - which I am not sure if there is - you would still have to hit the learn button.

Your best option is if you have anyone in your life who could come and connect a ratgdo for you.

Or you could try using one of myq’s supported partners and link that to home assistant. Maybe someone else in the community will have a better idea than me.

Maybe I’ll end up being able to get it to work again, but I can’t promise that it will work reliably.

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I use a Nortek GDO. Yes the warning LEDs fail in them all the time and they quit working until you either replace the warning led or jump it… But I don’t have to ask Chamberlain if I can close my Garage.

Another interesting side effect. When the LEDs started failing on the nortek a few years ago. They suddenly got cheap. I have two mounted in the garage and two in a drawer next to the soldering iron for the next time the LEDs fail. :joy:

This, Mazda, (remember btw Mazda is Ford, don’t think Ford is any better) I’m voting with my money and LOUDLY exclaiming in emails and public comment that if you do this. I will NOT buy your products.

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I’d appreciate a guide on how you do this.

I have MyQ in a business setting, and unfortunately it is not possible right now to just move away from it.

“FWIW MyQ garages speak MQTT-secure directly to their servers on Azure. I’m going to be devoting many evenings attemping MITM on these connections or attempting to dump / upload custom firmware to it that point to my HA MQTT server with a hot CA”

Keep us informed of your progress, Jeremy!

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Unsolicited advice…

If it were mine in a business setting, you have been informed that you have unsupported/unsupportable technology. If this were a server? A printer? A workstation? At least in any IT shop I’ve ever worked with. That’s justification for budget for new tech. Get the price for your replacement tech now and submit it for budget.

I WOULD ABSOLUTELY be making plans to move away from it. The code author is telling you the company isn’t cooperating with developers. In fact they are ACTIVELY working against those trying. Anyone continuing will be in a cat/mouse arms race with Chamberlain until they ultimately force authentication of the client (codesigning certs. This is easy for them but the nuclear option because after they do this they can’t pretend they’re not doing it for the money.)

If you are concerned enough about what you can and can’t do with a device because it’s in a business environment you should be concerned enough about this device now to run far away from it unless you use it ONLY the way chamberlain intends for you to use it. Through thier app.

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Luke, Thanks for all you have done to date (and in the future?). We really appreciate the effort and man hours you have dedicated to helping us with this. Please let us know what we can do to help.

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For anyone interested in a temporary interim solution: I’ve disabled automatic polling of the integration which has allowed me to stay connected without constant 429 errors. The downside to this, though, is that the state of the cover will be incorrect until it updates. To circumvent this, I’ve created an automation to update the entity on certain conditions like:

  • The garage door (not cover) opening (if the garage door has opened, it’s likely that we’re going in and out of the garage and we should update the cover’s state in X seconds)
  • The garage cover has been in open/opening state for 1 minute
  • Our trackers leave the house zone

This has been working for a few days now. Not an ideal solution, but will do until I figure out next steps.

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or you use a ratgdo device and simplify your method. ratgdo give full functionality with just 3 wires connected. could not be simpler. it senses door position, open/close door, controls the light, does obstruction detection and all that for $30. why complicate the solution?

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MyQ just logged in (via HA) and is working. Maybe just dumb luck though.

I always tried to tell people to get the Home Bridge Hub that communicates to HA with HomeKit instead of the horrible myq cloud. I tried to defend the Home Bridge Hub as different than myq cloud on reddit, but few seemed to listen. Ultimately the claimed numbers meant people weren’t buying this version of the hub, maybe because of the cost, maybe because it was confusing to have different products that appear to do similar things but not exactly the same.

Maybe they will introduce Matter support and that would be great because myq cloud sucks, but personally I’m not going to give up my Home Bridge Hub. If it were to ever fail I’d rather overpay for a replacement on eBay or get the Ratgdo (if in stock) than use the myq cloud.

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How do you do this? I already have a tilt sensor installed as a backup for MyQ so I am just missing the open/close ability.

Go to the System Options for MyQ (myq > integration entries > your email > 3 dots), and uncheck “Enable polling for updates”.

Doesn’t seem to work since I am already logged/locked out

i also have the same issue

@Lash-L I don’t use MyQ, but I’ve run across the cloudfare problem on other platforms. One you might look at is Jackett, it’s an open source torrent catalog server and it has some method it uses to circumvent cloudfare. I don’t recall what the add-on is called but I’ve looked at it a few times for torrent servers that have similar protections as MyQ appears to have but never had to pull the trigger on it. Perhaps that will give some insight how to defeat the issue.

In addition to the solutions suggested may I suggest another - never buy a Chamberlain product again. Search for alternative products that are not hostile to their customers. I believe Genie is one such company.

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Hi folks (thank you for the effort to keep this going!)
Whilst I really want to say F U MyQ, I’ve already paid money for the hardware and to move now whilst wolves my problem, doesn’t make them hurt in any way as they’ve made their money off me.
So, that leads me to my question - in the most petty of way, how do we find a way to come together to just keep fixing it so that MyQ are consistently spending money on finding ways to block 3rd parties until it’s not cost efficient (as they seem like the company that only listens to $$). Is there a community model that can be used here?
I also assume their domain is on some kind of trust list? Or is there a way to get Home Assistant or a personal domain on an approved / low risk list so cloud flare doesn’t think it’s just a bot?