MyQ Smart Garage Door Opener

I was looking forward picking up a couple smart home products for this past Amazon Prime day.  I area in my home that I have not automated yet is my garage doors.  There have been a few times where I have forgot to close my garage door and it has stayed open all night.  I have read a lot of mixed reviews of the MyQ smart garage door opener but at the end of the day it seems to be the best, most cost effective choice in the category.

I have two garage doors so I needed to purchase the add-on sensor to control my second door.  Interestingly the add-on sensor cost more than the hub and primary sensor due to the Prime day deal that I got.  I ended up paying just over $60 for both items.

The product consists of a hub that installs in your garage, is connected to wifi and needs to be paired with your garage door opener as well as a sensor that installs on your garage door to determine if your garage door is open or closed.  The MyQ hub is manufactured by Chamberlain, one of the biggest garage door manufacturers and they claim they the MyQ hub works with most garage door openers manufactured after 1993.  I have 2 identical Chamberlain garage door openers manufactured in 2016 so no problem, or so I thought.

To get started on installation you need to first get the MyQ app and set up a user id and password.  Then you plug in and power up the hub, scan the serial number, connect to wifi and pair the hub and sensor to the device.  Should be pretty straight forward given that I have Chamberlain garage door openers manufactured in 2016.  The process went off the rails for me when attempting to pair the hub with my garage door opener.  No matter how many times I tried I just could not get the hub to pair.  I went through the process a couple times and was finally directed to contact technical support.  Unfortunately this was the 2nd day of Prime day so I knew I was in for a long wait.  After getting disconnected for chat support about a dozed times I decided to just call in.  I only had to wait about a half hour to speak to a person.  The friendly tech support rep had me go through the pairing process again using my phone, then again using the web portal and still no luck.  She put me on hold for  a few minutes and had me pair the hub as a light through the setup process and that seemed to do the trick.  So after an hour on the phone with tech support I had a working smart garage door opener.  I was able to repeat the process for my 2nd opener and the rest of the process was fairly pain free.  Except for the next day when my wife came home and the remote openers in my car not longer worked.  Although I think that may have been my own fault as I may have held the program button down too long one time and wiped out the codes for my remotes.  We were pretty easily able to reprogram the remotes but it just added to the my frustration with the process.

I usually don't expect much from apps created by non technology companies but the MyQ app isn't too bad.  The main status screen shows you and icon of your garage door or doors and how long they have been open.  You can click on the doors to open or close them.  This works fairly quickly the only aggravation is the LED flashing and beeping that comes from the hub when you close the door from the app.  This is a safety feature as if someone is in the garage you could unknowingly close the door on them.  I thought that is why all garage doors not have the safety laser but over not that big of a deal.

The next important screen is the settings screen where you can access History, Device Management, myQ Guests, Works with myQ, Alerts and schedules.

 The History screen is pretty useful as it shows a log of when each door was opened.  The myQ Guests allows you to invite people to have access to open and close the garage doors, I was able to invite my wife using this feature. I have an Alert set if my garage door is opened for more than two hours to notify me, probably the most useful feature for me at this point.  There is also a schedule screen where you can schedule your garage doors to close at a certain time every day.

The works with myQ screen allows you link the hub with other smart home services like Google Assistant, IFTTT, and Apple Homekit.  The Apple Homekit integration requires an additional bridge that you need to purchase.  Interestingly no integrations with Alexa.  I think there was at one point but they were removed for security reasons.  One of the big complaints I have heard about the Google Assistant and IFTTT integrations is there is a monthly fee to use them.   This is pretty much unheard of with other Smart Home manufacturers.  IFTTT has geofencing functionality where you can set your garage door to open when you get close to home.   This would be a nice feature but I am not going to pay for it.  Hopefully Chamberlain will see the error of their ways and eliminate the monthly fees.  But I think this is something you sometimes see when I non tech company gets into technology.  They just don't see the value of providing these services as part of the product.

Pros:

Inexpensive 

Easy to physically Install

Functionally does what is supposed to do

Cons:

Setup process can be a headache

Charge for IFTTT and Google Home integrations

No Amazon Alexa Integration

Overall Pretty happy with my myQ opener after he frustrations with getting it setup.  The one additional integration that I have not decided whether I want to use yet is Amazon Key.  This is Amazon's service that allows the delivery driver to unlock your door or open your garage to deliver your package inside so it doesn't get stolen.  They sell a kit that comes with an Amazon Cloud Cam so you can watch deliveries but it did not go on sale for Prime Day so I opted just for the hub.  Apparently you can turn Amazon key on without a camera but I am not sure I am comfortable with that, I also don't want to have yet another app to view videos from.  Since I already own Arlo cameras I am considering getting an Arlo Q camera for my garage and trying out the Key Service.  I will report back my experience here if I do.