Here's a first world problem: Our garage door opener was old. The opener itself worked fine - though it was kind of loud - but most importantly, most of the controls didn't work. For example, I didn't know the keypad's code and couldn't figure out a way to reset it due to a lack of online instructions (and the previous owner didn't know the code either). Plus, our car remotes worked sporadically at best.
So you can image the HEART ACHE when we would go for a bike ride. We'd open the door pushing the inside button next to the kitchen entrance. Then we'd take our bikes out and leave them in the driveway. Then we'd walk back into the garage, push the button, and walk ALL THE WAY AROUND to the main entrance to get to our lonely bikes. Such a first world problem!
OK, so the justification for getting a new garage door opener was a little flimsy. But let's be honest, besides lights automatically turning on, what's the other smart home item you ALWAYS see in concept videos? Garage doors. That's what. And if you're on a quest to have the smartest home on the block, that means you NEED a smart garage door opener.
This was actually an update we wanted to make to our home right away. However, my main criteria for "smart" is that it needs to include Apple's HomeKit and work with Siri. Despite garage door openers being listed on Apple's website since the intro of HomeKit, it took until this summer for a manufacture, Chamberlain, to actually sell a product.
You could buy a smart garage door opener for a while, but all of them used their own app. Then Garagio, came out with a slick app and a lot of integrations included Amazon's Echo and IFTTT, but not HomeKit.
Then Chamberlain promised they would come out with a HomeKit enabled opener. Then they showed a concept of it during CES in January and promised it would be released this summer. Then on August 30th (way to cut it close guys!) they released it.
Chamberlain Smart Garage Door Opener With MyQ Bridge
You buy one of their wifi enabled openers plus a MyQ Home Bridge (if you don't need HomeKit, you don't need the bridge).Install the opener by following the instructions. I didn't find it difficult, but I did need to make sure to take my time since order seemed to matter. Once that's up and running, plug the bridge into power, follow the instructions to connect to your home network, and you're done. That part was shockingly easy.
Here's what the bridge looks like:
Here's the garage door in action using Siri:
Super cool, right? Elinor loves it, which is awesome.
Other features I like
I like that there's a sensor on the indoor button which turns the light on automatically when I open the kitchen door. Apparently this is a standard feature now, but it's new and amazing to me.
I ended up getting their super quiet belt drive (because that was the only option at Home Depot) and it's amazingly quiet! I highly recommend this upgrade. Now that I've experienced it, I would specifically seek this out.
The app is fine. You open it and there's a picture of your door. Tap it, and your door opens. There's a companion Apple Watch app, but we'll use Siri and the keypad/buttons 99% of the time. Being able to see the history is interesting, though I'm not totally sure when I'll want that.
I like being able to see if my door is open when I'm not in the garage (the classic situation is laying in bed and wondering if you shut the garage door). I also set a schedule to automatically close the door at 11pm just in case it's still open. And included it when I set the "Good Night" scene.
So that's cool.
Do You Need a Smart Garage Door Opener?
No, but it's genuinely fun, especially if you have a smart watch. I like riding my bike home and telling Siri to open the garage door. Could I simply enter the keypad code? Sure. And if I'm honest, we probably wouldn't have upgraded if our keypad still worked.If you're getting a new garage door opener anyways, I'd at least get a wifi enabled one. You don't have to use it, but having the option is really nice. Plus, I suspect that integrations with smart hubs like Amazon's Echo, Google Home, and HomeKit will continue to get better and having wifi will enable most of them.