[OBSOLETE] MyQ Lite Door and Lamp Control (for Liftmaster/Chamberlain)

@pmjoen - that is odd. Never seen that before. Maybe just refresh the page on your phone? Or open/close the door again?

@rsg123 - Yes, it should work fine with the built-in wifi MyQ openers.

For some reason one specific garage door always shows the open image even when the status shows closed


You’re right - that was a weird bug, but I think I fixed it now. It was happening with one of mine. Apparently since the door handler was set to allow users to change the icon, at some point SmartThings stopped automatically changing the icon. I disabled the icon customization, and it seems to update correctly now. New code is out on github.

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I just installed this app along w/ the Ecolink Tilt Sensor that everyone recommends. Before mounting, I tested the sensor and it seemed to work pretty much flawlessly, updating immediately as I went from vertical to horizontal and vice versa. However, once mounted to the garage door it seems to have a slight delay. I notice that when issuing a command, the status updates to “opening/closing” and it stays that way until pretty much the garage door is entirely open or closed. Once the door itself completes the operation, the status goes back to display the state BEFORE the operation was initiated (e.g. if the door was open and goes to closed, it will say open > closing > open). About 45-60 seconds after the door completely closes, the status finally updates to the correct status. I don’t think it’s a z-wave distance issue since I pulled the device off the door and tested manually tilting it and it updates almost immediately. The only thing I can think of is that my garage door’s top panel actually tilts slightly upwards, which maybe isn’t properly activating the sensor? I’m not 100% sure that is the issue either though, since if it wasn’t actually activating, I don’t think the red LED would light up and it wouldn’t eventually correct itself. I’ve attached a photo of the slightly upward angle to see what ppl think (https://goo.gl/photos/yLzmx2mRLTmkwbFL8). I could possibly fashion some type of angled block so that it goes completely flat in the open position, but didn’t want to make the effort since the signs don’t seem to point to that. Any ideas? (I also tried doing a repair on the z-wave network, which didn’t have any effect).

Don’t worry too much about the opening/closing status on the MyQ door device itself. Those are basically placeholder statuses that just let you know you initiated something, and the door is waiting on the sensor to report what’s actually happening. On top of that, there is typically a 30+ second delay before the door does a final refresh on the sensor to set things to the final value. There may be a bug causing it to temporarily flip back to the previous status before doing that final refresh, so I’ll try and make a note to do some more testing on that. Functionally, though, it shouldn’t affect anything.

If you’re looking for more instant indication of what’s happening, look at the value of the sensor itself in the mobile app, and watch what it does while the door is opening or closing.

Okay, so I have been looking to configure my garage door to work with my smarthome, but I don’t know some of the basics that I want to be sure I know before I spend any money at all. Will someone here answer a few simple questions for me?

The main question is
Do I need the MyQ gateway or is that something smartthings can do? Does smartthings eliminate the use for that piece of equipment or do I still need to purchase it?

I have a Liftmaster opener that has a MyQ logo on the side of it. It’s model number is 8355 and I have a Samsung multi-purpose sensor on it to tell whether it is in the open or closed position.

I’m new to all of this home automation stuff, so I’m trying to keep my question as simple as possible lol.

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You do still need the MyQ gateway. They can be found at lowes for about $40. Once set up with a free MyQ account, you can use this smart app to have smartthings control it.

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Thank you. I’m ordering it now

Sears also has it and you can use SYWR points/coupons (it’s in the tool category) to bring the price down. I just bought one with surprise points/coupons for under $30 after tax.

Thanks for the tip. I don’t use SYWR (maybe I probably should lol). I was able to get it from lowes with a 15 off 50 coupon, so I more or less got it and ten LED light bulbs shipped for $46

The bad thing is it looks like shipping might take forever, but I can wait because I’ll have my new AEON doorbell to “play” with for a few days too keep me occupied.

I’m not going to lie, I get confused a lot in these forums looking for things, but I really like how Samsung has made Smartthings so open. Next I get to try to figure out CORE.lol

Well I lied, it showed up today while I was at lunch. I followed the tutorial for installing the smart app and device handlers, but I still don’t have the app listed under My apps. Only Nest manager is showing up.

Sorry to keep posting back to back in this thread, but I was able to figure out why the app wasn’t showing in the my apps section based off of some of the posts in this thread. (thanks walkerj001).

I got it all figured out now I believe. It looks like if you are using the samsung multi purpose you need to register it as a contact sensor and a acceleration sensor for it to read open and closed properly.

So I got a tilt sensor with my MyQ purchase, but I can’t figure out how to get it to show up in Smartthings to tell smartthings if my garage is opened or closed? Did I do something wrong? Other than that this works outstanding. Thanks for the hard work.

Using MyQ Lite with a Virtual Contact Sensor: A Better (and cheaper) Mousetrap for Virtual MyQ Garage Door Sensors:

Being that my ST hub cannot connect reliably to ST Multipurpose Sensors in my garage (I tested and had to return them to Amazon) and I always like a coding challenge to achieve what hardware alone cannot.

Scenario:

  • 3 garage doors, each with MyQ connectivity
  • The cost of 3 ST Multipurpose sensors to provide door open/closed status is ~$100. Adding a required repeater to achieve a reliable hub connection increases the overall cost to $150.
  • Contact sensors work in the house, but when moved to garage fail to show state of garage door.
  • Provide a virtual contact sensor which uses the email notifications sent from MyQ

Option 1 (Best, if you love coding)

  • Created 3 virtual contact sensors in ST as "Garage1, Garage2, Garage3

  • Created a SmartAPP with REST API endpoints that provides sensor state and open/close events to the DTH and named virtual contact sensors.

  • Created a python program using an existing capacity on a RPi 2 server that polls my Gmail account every 15 seconds for the email notifications from Assurelink (Craftsman Brand MyQ). Processes the snippet information of the email for MyQ door name and state.

  • To verify garage door state, the python program also API queries MyQ once to verify the state of the named door.

  • After verification of the state of the door, the python program queries the named ST virtual contact sensor and if the state is different then the MyQ state, it updates the named ST Contact Sensor to the new state.

  • The Python program modifies the email from Assurelink as “Read” and “Archive”.

  • The ST SmartApp notifies me of the garage door virtual sensor state change.

  • Requires: Custom coding knowledge, a server to run code, a SmartAPP REST API, custom DTH.

    2017-03-04 16:02:29,028 INFO Prius Door just opened 04:02 PM Mar 04
    2017-03-04 16:02:29,029 INFO Door : Prius Door Sensor
    2017-03-04 16:02:29,030 INFO Status : open
    2017-03-04 16:02:29,030 INFO Updating ‘Prius Door Sensor’ to ‘open’
    2017-03-04 16:02:29,728 INFO https://graph.api.smartthings.com:443/api/smartapps/installations/xxx/sensors/Prius+Door+Sensor/open
    2017-03-04 16:02:29,733 INFO 200
    2017-03-04 16:05:22,589 INFO Prius Door just closed 11:24 AM Mar 04
    2017-03-04 16:05:22,589 INFO Door : Prius Door Sensor
    2017-03-04 16:05:22,590 INFO Status : closed
    2017-03-04 16:05:22,590 INFO Updating ‘Prius Door Sensor’ to ‘closed’
    2017-03-04 16:05:23,061 INFO https://graph.api.smartthings.com:443/api/smartapps/installations/xxx/sensors/Prius+Door+Sensor/closed
    2017-03-04 16:05:23,066 INFO 200
    2017-03-04 16:20:04,082 INFO Ruby Door Sensor : closed
    2017-03-04 16:20:04,083 INFO Prius Door Sensor: closed
    2017-03-04 16:20:04,083 INFO Honda Door Sensor: closed
    2017-03-04 16:20:04,084 INFO NoSync: Ruby Door=closed <-> Ruby Door=closed
    2017-03-04 16:20:04,084 INFO NoSync: Prius Door=closed <-> Prius Door=closed
    2017-03-04 16:20:04,085 INFO NoSync: Honda Door=closed <-> Honda Door=closed

Option 2 (No Hardware, No Custom Coding except creating an IFTTT applet)

  • Create a virtual ST contact garage switch in the ST IDE, one for each garage door and name each device with a unique name (Garage1, Garage 2, etc).
  • Make sure you have notifications ‘ON’ in your MyQ app so that emails are sent to your email provider.
  • Authorize the ST virtual contact sensors to be controlled by IFTTT
  • Create an IFTTT applet per garage door state, ie one for an ‘open’ and one for ‘closed’ state. Each IFTTT applet should search the email for the sender (:from in Gmail), and search the subject line (:subject in Gmail) for door name and state. If using another email system, achieve the same using IFTTT applets.
  • Connect each IFTTT applet you created to the named virtual contact sensor for the garage door. I have shown one IFTTT that I created for handling a ‘closed’ event for my Prius Door as below.
  • No custom SmartApp or DTH needed.
  • No server or python coding
  • No polling MyQ

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Thanks for thinking of this! I found a small issue in your instructions, so here is how I got around it:

IFTTT can not change the value of a contact sensor, it can only turn a switch ON or OFF (or lock/unlock door, or activate/deactive siren/alarms) so I created a combination Virtual Contact Sensor Switch Device Type. IFTTT can turn on [Open] or turn off [Close] This device and then MyQ Lite can read it’s value as a Contact Sensor, the response is a little delayed as typical with IFTTT Applets and it causes a little blip in the MyQ Lite Device Status (perhaps the runin times should be pushed out a little if running in this style), but now I can get the actual state of my Doors!

https://github.com/ph4r/SmartThings_MyQ/blob/master/devicetypes/ph4r/virtual-contact-sensor-switch.groovy

I have garage doors named Double and Single in my LiftMaster account, and here is the text for the IFTTT gmail triggers that I used so that you can copy/paste as you like:

from:MyQ-Notifications@myliftmaster.com subject:"MyQ Alert: Double just opened"
from:MyQ-Notifications@myliftmaster.com subject:"MyQ Alert: Double just closed"
from:MyQ-Notifications@myliftmaster.com subject:"MyQ Alert: Single just opened"
from:MyQ-Notifications@myliftmaster.com subject:"MyQ Alert: Single just closed"

Finally, I did not previously have email alerts configured and it took a minute to figure out how to set that up. In case anyone else is looking for it, From your MyQ app, open the hamburger menu and select Alerts, despite it showing an on/off selector, you can press the line and then you can change the settings to turn on/off push and email notifications.

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@ph4r Thanks for providing more details! Glad this virtual method is working for you and hopefully others that cannot use physical contact sensors with MyQ Lite!

I pushed out an update today that adds a summary page to the end of the MyQ Lite setup on the mobile app. This summary page will show whether the installation was successful. If there were errors with creating child devices (especially from missing device handler code), it will display those errors as well.

Thanks for making this great app!

I’ve been having a minor problem with my setup, if I open the door with Smartthings but close it with the opener in the car after leaving it still shows the door open. The chamberlin app shows it closed. I am using the monoprice tilt sensor maybe its not getting a good signal in the garage?

Thanks for any help you can give.

I assume the tilt sensor itself is still showing the door as open as well? It’s definitely possible the signal is weak if it’s far away from your hub with no other repeaters in between.

Has anyone else had issues with their garage door just opening randomly lately? I’ve never had this problem until a couple of days ago, and it happened like 15 times in one day. I have an automatic pro in our car and use it to automatically close the garage door when we leave and to open it when we get home using IFFT (which I freaking hate because it’s soooo slow and unreliable) and I wondered if maybe it was caused by the AWS outage the other day so I disabled the IFFFT recipes hoping that would fix it but it doesn’t seem to have. So now I’m wondering if this is an issue on chamberlin’s side?