GoControl / Linear Garage Door Controller or MyQ Gateway

Devices & Integrations
1

I have two LiftMaster garage door openers with MyQ and Security 2.0+. I purchased two of the Lenear Garage Door Controllers from Lowe’s awhile back when they were on sale for around $30. I finally got around to installing one today to only discover that they are not exactly compatible with my garage door openers because of the Security 2.0+ feature. After some digging around it seems that I can solder the Linear Garage Door Controllers to the circuit board of a spare push-button garage door opener that is used inside of a vehicle. This leaves me with two options:

OPTION 1 - Just go out and buy a MyQ Gateway that will control both of my garage door openers. This would require no extra wiring and / or soldering. However, it is my understanding that i will need to purchase two tilt sensors to place on the garage doors so that SmartThings will know if the door is opened or closed.

OPTION 2 - Take a spare push-button garage door opener used inside a vehicle and wire up both Linear Garage Door Controllers to it. Each Linear Controller would be wired to a separate button within the garage door opener. This way, I can control each garage door independently. These controllers already come with a tilt sensor so no additional purchases would be needed.

Is there are advantages / disadvantages of choosing one over the other? While using the MyQ Gateway seems like the way to install everything with the least hassle, it would require some additional purchases. In addition, it seems like you have to use the MyQ Lite app as a way to interface with the Gateway to control the garage doors.

On the other hand, using the Linear controllers will require a little bit of soldering, it seems that this would be the best way to go to integrate with SmartThings.

What are your thoughts?

Chris

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MyQ doesn’t need a garage door sensor. The unit will report the garage door status through the API’s.

For a pro vs con see this thread:

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I think you captured the choices correctly.

I prefer to use the open standard or the closest approximation - to me that means not using MyQ gateway. IMO the proprietary solutions are more expensive and less flexible in the long run - looking to drop the hammer on you sometime in the future.

This soldering should be pretty easy - don’t overheat the work. You can shield nearby components with layers of tinfoil.

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4

RBoy,

I think that we may be talking past each other a little bit here. Correct me if I am wrong. If I use the MyQ gateway and wish to setup routines, monitor the open / close status of the garage door, etc. via the SmartThings app then I do need to have sensors on the garage door. From what I have read, Chamberlain killed off SmartThings polling their servers for the garage door open / close status. If I am only using the MyQ app to monitor the garage door status then I do not need the sensors.

Is this correct? If not, then how do I get the SmartThings app to show the open / close status of my garage doors?

Chris

5

MyQ allows for a couple of things:

  1. Read current state of garage door (open or closed or opening or closing)
  2. Set state of garage door (open or close)

So with these option you don’t need any sensor on the garage door. What you’re referring to is Chamberlain complaining about folks who had modified Jason’s DH and were overpolling their server to read the states of the garage door (like every few seconds or minutes). So they threatened to kill off the API’s or block ST’s servers. Since then @brbeaird has developed an alternative version which does away with scheduled polling and instead relies to events to trigger a poll the Chamberlain server. This has significantly reduced the load on the server and things are dandy as of now. This device reports the state of the garage door in addition to allowing you to control it.

So you can use routines to control the garage door using the MyQ community integration and it should work just fine without any sensor.

Hope this answers your question.

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6

@RBoy summarizes things nicely.

I’ll just add a couple things to that:

  1. A few months ago, I modified the MyQ Lite SmartApp code a bit so that you can do quite a bit of interacting with the garage doors even without having sensors on them. You can open/close the doors via routines, have open/close buttons appear in SmartTiles/ActionTiles, and even have the doors open/close via Alexa or Google Home. The only thing you don’t get is having SmartThings know if the door is actually open or closed. It does all of this by having “open” and “close” virtual momentary button switches, so essentially you just use those buttons as the drivers behind all your automated rules. That said, the optimal way to use this SmartApp is to have a separate SmartThings-capable sensor on each door. While it’s an added expense, it has been rock solid for me, and I love it.

  2. On the other hand, if you’re open to soldering the Linear controllers to a remote, I’d say go for it. We all have our line for how far we’ll go to get something automated; personally, that one’s over my line and is just a bit too janky for me. In a perfect world, I’d probably have thought to have a simpler garage door opener installed in my house originally that doesn’t need all the MyQ mess, but for now my SmartApp gets the job done.

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My two cents: I have used the GoControl Linear and it worked well while it lasted. However, I believe the relay inside the unit gave out within just about two years and stopped opening the door. I’ve heard others complain about the same thing as well.

I have since switched to a new Chamberlain opener with built-in MyQ. I am still using the GoControl, but just for the door sensor functionality and with @brbeaird’s device handler, it is working very well.

Hoping this one will last longer!!

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I’m a bit confused now - the MyQ functionality says it was “withdrawn” from SmartThings.
It worked well for me before (status and control) with no tilt sensors but has since stopped working.

I do have a MyQ Gateway, and I can use the independent app to check status and control, but this is not integrated in ST anymore.

Is there a new option to bring MyQ into ST? I keep seeing posts about GoControl device handlers but I’m a bit confused what I need to do to get this working again.

Help appreciated.

Chris

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Chris,

MyQ and GoControl are two separate garage door opener solutions. It is my understanding that the original SmartThings integration with MyQ has been withdrawn. This is probably the one which stopped working for you. Since then, @brbeaird has developed a new set of MyQ/SmartThings device handlers and smart apps which works very well and this is what I was referring to in my post above.

Look at this post for more information:
https://community.smartthings.com/t/release-myq-lite-door-and-lamp-control-for-liftmaster-chamberlain/49150

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Thank you.
Reading through that post, it looks like I need to add some tilt sensors to the doors (bummer) but I guess that’s OK since the polling of MyQ was causing a problem.
I’ll get a couple and try it out. To be honest, I miss this functionality.
Thanks for the info.
May I ask what kind of tilt sensors you are using?
Chris

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No you don’t, see my post above:

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RBoy,

I did end up buying the Chamberlain gateway for my garage doors. I also installed @brbeaird version for smartthings integration. However, I have not been able to get it to report the status of the garage doors being open or closed. Maybe I am missing an additional piece that needs installed.

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It can’t report the status unless you get a SmartThings-capable sensor on the door. That said, you can still open/close the door without necessarily knowing the current status.

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Thanks for confirming as this is what I thought. I was perplexed as RBoy was stating that a sensor was not needed.

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Well, he’s correct in that you can still control the door, but the overall experience is a lot cleaner if you’ve got sensors.

His earlier description is slightly off in that my version does not do polling, period. There’s no schedule that polls nor is there any event that triggers a poll to the MyQ servers. But again, the code does allow for a “no sensor” type that still allows door control without knowing the actual open/close status of the door.

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Chris,

To answer your question about the tilt sensor - my case is probably a little unique (see my first post in this thread). I’m using a broken GoControl unit as my tilt sensor in combination with MyQ.

I am sure if you read through the other thread, which I listed above, you will see questions and/or comments from other community members about tilt sensors. I think you should also be able to use the Smartthings multi-sensor for this purpose.

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Hmm I thought you had a trigger for a door to update the status.

Maybe I’m wrong, I may have modified it to trigger an update when I open/close my internal door to the garage (with a delay offset). I think you can safely put a 15 second update after each open/close event triggered by the user. That’s the way I’ve setup it up so I know when it’s closed and when it’s open.

The system allows to retrieve the status, I was under the impression that the MyQ was doing it. I’m able to see when it’s closed and when it’s open without having to resort to over polling beyond the 1 poll I stated above.

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The old MyQ app from copyninja had the status update triggered by open/close event along with the polling option. I removed both in the new version just to be safe. If yours still does it, I’d guess you modded it yourself at some point and put it back in from the older version.

While it would probably be fine traffic-wise to have it do an update after open/close event, it still wouldn’t be perfect because plenty of door actions are still initiated by physical remotes or wall switches, and every time that happens, the door status could get out of sync in SmartThings, which would cause it to work incorrectly in routines and such. If the status is reflected at all in SmartThings, it really needs to be trustworthy pretty much all the time, and that’s only possible with a sensor or regular polling.

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Brian,

Recently my MyQ stopped working (within the last week). Really the only option I cared about was when I came home, it would open the garage door for me. I followed all of your instructions and no matter what I do, I can’t even get my smartthings to see my Chamberlain MyQ garage doors. Now when I go to the “add a SmartApp” “My Apps” I can see the MyQ lite and I can also see my garage doors in there. But now the sensors on the doors don’t show up while doing the set up. Also, if I go to “My Home” “Things” “add a thing” it never sees my Chamberlain MyQ so it makes it impossible to add my garage doors to a routine. Any advice from you would be greatly appreciated.

-Todd

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Did you update to the latest version of the code, there were some recent changes to the authentication flow which Chamberlain has slowly deprecated over the past few months for the older authentication methods.