Monday, September 04, 2017

Smart Garage Door Opener---Liftmaster / Chamberlain MyQ HomeKit Bridge

Our new home came with a MyQ garage door opener but no bridge to connect to the internet.  A bridge was available that would allow the garage door to be controlled from the MyQ application on my phone, but it was not HomeKit compatible.  The HomeKit bridge was promised for June, then for July, finally for August.  I signed up with Chamberlain to be notified when it came.  I read that it was available on my HomeKit news feed; I did not get an e-mail notification.  As far as I know, I ordered the day it was available after a low key announcement.  I got an e-mail in the next day or two saying they were already sold out.

The good news is they refunded the shipping charge (which seemed excessive anyway) and I got it about two weeks after I ordered it.

Installing the bridge was very easy.  Pick a place to install where the cord can reach a plug.  Install the bracket with a couple of screws slide the bridge onto the bracket to plug it in.  Follow the instructions on the MyQ app.  It was strange it never asked for WiFi passwords since my understanding is that the bridge communicates through WiFi.  I thought maybe it got the WiFi password from HomeKit.  In any case it all works without entering a WiFi password.

We love it so far.  We use it most coming back from walks.  We can tell Siri to open the garage instead of punching in the combination on the keypad.  Leaving for walks we can just press the enter button on the keypad to close the garage door since the door was just in use.  Still a little bit easier than saying -- "Hey Siri, close the garage."  But "Hey Siri, open the garage" is easier than entering the combination and pressing Enter.  We haven't left and wondered if we forgot to close the garage.  Next time we do wonder if the garage door is open, we can just look at the HomeKit app or the MyQ app since the garage door is accessible from anywhere.

The only disappointment is minor.  We can't use Siri or the application to turn on the light on the garage door opener. The light is not a separate object on HomeKit pr the MyQ app as near as I can tell.  Not a big deal, just thought it would be fun to control the garage door light through the application.

Chamberlain MyQ also has a line of switches for lights.  Chamberlain press releases imply these switches will be HomeKit compatible with the HomeKit bridge.  They aren't branded HomeKit yet and Apple has not updated their website to show that MyQ is shipping the compatible Bridge for the garage door opener let alone compatible light switches.

I plan to buy two wall light switches and one table lamp to make the lighting in the home a little more usable.  I'll consider the MyQ if they end up fully HomeKit compatible.



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