Garage Access as a Service: The Chamberlain Group’s Anti-Consumer Approach to the Smart Home

When you instal a car shed doorway successful your home, you expect to person afloat entree to really it useful – astatine least, that’s really it worked historically. As Jennifer Pattison Touhy explains for The Verge, that’s not astatine each nan lawsuit pinch The Chamberlain Group, which has built its myQ smart car shed doorway controller exertion into galore of nan doors it sells and has systematically removed ways for consumers to usage nan tech:

The move breaks nan smart location integrations of thousands of users who relied connected platforms specified arsenic Homebridge and Home Assistant to do things for illustration unopen nan car shed doorway erstwhile they fastener their beforehand doorway aliases flash a ray if they time off their doorway unfastened for 10 minutes, aliases immoderate different power aliases automation they wanted to do pinch nan instrumentality they bought and paid for.

The move comes a twelvemonth aft Chamberlain discontinued its charismatic Apple HomeKit integration and a fewer months aft it yet killed support for Google Assistant. It’s sadly different illustration of really nan institution continues to beryllium dispute to nan interoperable smart home.

The consequence is that galore group who purchased car shed doors pinch myQ’s smart controller exertion built successful now person a little tin door. The only measurement to reconstruct smart location interoperability is to bargain a caller doorway controller aliases 1 of nan devices covered successful The Verge’s story.

What I find astir galling astir this communicative is that The Chamberlain Group is removing these features from its doors while simultaneously expanding its partnerships pinch car manufacturers and information companies. Think of it arsenic GaaaS: Garage Access arsenic a Service. Instead of offering consumers power directly, The Chamberlain Group ironically has group itself up arsenic nan gatekeeper of your garage. Rather than allowing consumers convenient entree to their car shed doors, The Chamberlain Group is steering them done paid services, which stinks.

I person a Chamberlain car shed doorway astatine location and haven’t decided yet what to do successful ray of this news. The myQ app is garbage – it’s virtually conscionable a large fastener to unfastened and adjacent nan doorway without entree via a widget, nan Home app, aliases Shortcuts. Oh, and it has ads too. I had been readying to spell nan Home Assistant way aft The Chamberlain Group removed HomeKit entree past fall, but instead, I expect I’ll bargain nan Meross Smart Wi-Fi Garage Door Opener that Stephen Hackett has utilized for a while.