We are in a gold rush of automation as we seek to find ways of adding everything around us to our smart home environments. Those of you familiar with solutions like Z-Wave, SmartThings, Philips Hue and more, know exactly what I am talking about. We are slowly reaching an age where everything around us will be automated, allowing us to take our minds off of the daily mundane tasks so that we can focus on more important topics at hand.
We aren’t always exactly saving ourselves a ton of time in the process with every automation we make, but it isn’t always about time either, It can be about peace of mind, like the baby camera in the nursery. Or in this case, wondering if you forgot to close the garage door before driving off to work.
With that, we discuss the Chamberlain MyQ Smart Garage Hub. Tasked with calming our psyche so that we can concentrate on the road instead of the many thoughts that come with second-guessing ourselves. It is a hub that installs near any non-smart garage door opener and turns it into a Wi-Fi-enabled device that can be monitored and controlled by your phone.
It allows you to check to see whether the door is open or shut, to shut it or open it remotely, and even notify if you left it open for too long (in case you forgot). It can even close it for you after so many minutes, just in case.
Quite easy to install, you will find yourself up and running within minutes (at least that was our experience). It clearly helps to have some experience with the smart home, but just about anyone can figure this one out. The hub works with (virtually) any garage door opener made past 1993, and is able to gain use of it using the learn button located somewhere on the motor (each model is different in location). You register with the app and it will walk you through everything.
We were even able to use it with a finicky Craftsman model that doesn’t like to work with third-party devices/solutions (ie, like the HomeLink buttons in your car) due to the rolling encrypted codes it uses. Somehow, this works with it just fine (it most likely helps that Chamberlain is the company behind the Craftsman openers).
The fact that you can now get your hand on one around $30 (or less when you have sales like Black Friday) is a huge bonus. So even if you don’t have a chance to make use of some of the extra features it claims to offer (Google Assistant, IFTTT, Wink, etc), you are still walking away with a valuable device for your home.
That being said, there are some quirks that prevent it from reaching a perfect score of any kind.
For one, it features an audible alert along with a flashing (strobe-like) light that is used as a safety measure to alert anyone nearby that the garage is about to move on its own. It’s a nice idea when you think about it, but it winds up being a little too much. The audible alert is too loud and plays for too long. Enough to alert neighbors and raise a concern about what is going on. This cannot be turned off. Safety is great, but it goes on for around 10 seconds or more between telling it to open or close and it actually doing it.
This is because it isn’t a direct signal between your app and the hub. Your commands are translated through the cloud, back and forth, and eventually to the hub and then the motor. If you are away from the house, then it is fine. However, so much time is going by while it is making all that noise, that neighbors are starting to wonder if a house alarm is going off (if your neighbors are close to you like most modern homes these days).
For two, it supports the ability to join the Amazon Key program for deliveries. If this doesn’t spook you, then you have a neat new feature to play with. However, despite supporting Amazon Key, they don’t offer any support for Amazon Alexa. At least, not during the time of this story. To make it worse, they do support Google Assistant, but apparently not Google Home, but we won’t even go into the details of this as the setup isn’t as straightforward as you’d think. We opted out of playing with it (Google) altogether in the end. Their setup for this seems quite a bit makeshift when it comes to third-party support. Hopefully, they will work at updating this in the near future to become more modern like most other smart devices.
They at least do not charge a fee to use these services anymore. They were for a while and it wasn’t gaining them any fans from their customers, especially since support for these services is so stagnant.
So don’t get too excited if you have hopes of using this with external services. At least, not yet. There is no telling if they will work to improve on these features or if they will just come out with a new hub later on, making everyone upgrade if they want it, but for now, this one works best within its own mobile app/services.
There are alternative options out there as it does support Wink and that integration seems to be going well. There is also the option if you use a Vera controller/hub to control your smart home, you can integrate MyQ into that through a plugin, and through that, you can make some use of Alexa if you have Alexa setup to work with Vera. It can appear as another device in the home. You can’t open (unlock) it, but you should be able to check status and close (lock) it (it shows up as a door lock device). Vera also works with Google Home, but it doesn’t support lock-type devices just yet within this integration. The only catch with Vera is that the plugin support can change often, so Vera may not always be a dependable solution in the long run.
Our Conclusion
If you are looking for a solution for your non-smart garage opener where you can check on and control your garage door from an independent app (Chamberlain’s MyQ app), then this is a killer option for you. It is easy to set up, and at the moment, is quite affordable to buy into. If you are hoping to control it via Alexa or integrate it into other platforms, another option may work best for you for now. So it didn’t get a perfect score from us because of this. However, it is still a mighty fine product on its own, leaving it with a positive score nonetheless. Simple peace of mind is easily worth $30 (or around that…).
Update (12/2022): It appears that the subscription cost for making use of certain features is back. The hub can interact with certain vehicles to automate the process of opening and closing your garage, but it will cost you as much as $300 for the right to use it (despite already owning the device). The same applies for certain features like IFTTT integration. This caused us to reduce our score of it as there are far too many free alternatives that don’t require paid subscriptions.
| Buy from Amazon | Buy from Chamberlain | |
Our Rating | Average Price* $29.99-$49.99 |
*Average price is based on the time this article was published
Video:
Additional Images:
Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.
Don’t forget to subscribe for a chance to win cool prizes!
