I’m a home lab tinkerer. I enjoy getting my house to do things that make my life easier. My current project involves using Home Assistant and my new home network to monitor my house. I don’t have to pay alarm company fees, camera fees, or any other rent to a company for things I already own. That’s why this story hit a nerve with me.
Imagine you just spent $400 on a smart garage door opener. You paid Chamberlain another $30 for a myQ hub to make it “smart.” Then in November 2023, Chamberlain blocked every third-party app from talking to your own garage door. Home Assistant. Apple Home. Google Home. SmartThings. IFTTT. All dead overnight.
Chamberlain called it “unauthorized usage” and said they cut off outside apps from accessing their door openers to improve the experience for their 10 million users. Home Assistant removed the myQ integration weeks later. The odd part? Amazon Key in-garage delivery still works because they charge $1.99 per order and they pay Chamberlain fees for access.
You now own a $430 garage door opener that only talks to one app, owned by one company, and they control who can and can’t interact with it. You are renting access to your own garage.
Paul Wieland, a former IT guy reverse-engineered Chamberlain’s Security protocol and built a device that speaks to it. He named it Rage Against the Garage Door Opener (ratgdo). He hoped to sell 100 units. Instead, he sold tens of thousands of them.
I’ve been predicting for years that the whole pitch of “you will own nothing and like it” that’s been going on, where people have to pay microfees for everything, would spawn a new industry of people who will sell hacks to get around this bullshit. It warms my heart to see that happening.
The disclaimer: I don’t advertise, and receive nothing for my reviews or articles. I don’t think that I ever will. I have no relationship with any products, companies, or vendors that I review here, other than being a customer. If I ever *DO* have a financial interest, I will disclose it. Otherwise, I pay what you would pay. No discounts or other incentives here. I only post these things because I think that my readers would be interested. In this case, I don’t own and have no experience with ratgdo. I have no idea how well it works or if it works. As a home lab tinkerer, I am just happy to see people working to find better alternatives to renting your garage door opener.
6 Comments
ghostsniper · July 28, 2026 at 6:20 am
What does it mean when a garage door opener is “smart”.
You push the button and it opens up, how smart does it need to be?
Divemedic · July 28, 2026 at 6:29 am
It has an Internet connection with an API. I use it to interface with Home Assistant, and it does cool things like send me push notifications when it opens and I am not home. If I leave home and forget to close it, Home Assistant closes it for me. (Mine isn’t Chamberlain.) I get stories like this because I do a lot of home lab tinkering. I’m getting pretty proficient with YAML.
Steve · July 28, 2026 at 6:54 am
Louis Rossmann just posted that Samsung did the same thing. Samsung initially asked all developers to use their API to work with their smart appliances. Now that people have Samsung appliances, Samsung has changed the deal so you will either use their app or pay them $4.99 per month.
bait-and-switch
link
Joee Blow · July 28, 2026 at 8:02 am
All part n parcel to the control mechanism…
They revel in the ability to hide behind bureaucratic red-tape. Well, we’d love to stop the flock camera’s, but my department isn’t in control of that contract… So you’re just going to have to give up your 4th Amendment rights.
Peter B · July 28, 2026 at 9:35 pm
I was so annoyed by this and the MyQ app was such a piece of shit that I immediately bought a new opener without any of this stupidity and a third-party controller to manually trigger the open / close and sensors to report it to Home Bridge. Cost me $300 that I was happy to spend. (this MyQ opener couldn’t just be controlled by any old thing because they went to the trouble of encrypting the serial interface instead of using a simple open/close contact.)
anonymous coward · July 29, 2026 at 10:32 pm
Claude and Codex have now made what would have taken months of reverse engineering and turned them into weekend projects. Expect many more gatekeeping systems to be hacked so that owners can use them as they wish.
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