The $100 Chamberlain MyQ Storage Door Opener allows you to open and shut your storage door from anyplace with an web connection. It additionally grants you the power to set customized alerts and monitor whether or not your storage door is open or closed. Google Assistant, HomeKit and IFTTT assist are all choices with the MyQ, none of that are free. Understandably, subscriptions for these providers rub a number of customers the incorrect manner. For those who do not thoughts paying the premium, the MyQ system affords the broadest sensible storage compatibility out there.

There’s loads to love concerning the MyQ. Set up is straightforward. Broad compatibility means the MyQ ought to work in your present storage hardware. Chamberlain’s inclusive angle additionally means you may coordinate the MyQ to work together with a rising variety of linked dwelling platforms.

Colin West McDonald/Proinertech

You will discover that interoperability to be essential to the MyQ reaching its full potential. The fundamentals of the MyQ all work as anticipated, however quickly after you put in it you begin questioning what else it could actually do. What if it may study while you’re coming and going and reply routinely? Would not a digicam within the storage additionally make sense?

Between its comparatively low value and its ease of use, the MyQ is recommendable in that it that delivers on its core guarantees with little fuss. Simply be ready to really feel the itch so as to add extra sensible merchandise when you begin utilizing it.

Installs in a flash

The world of linked storage door openers is surprisingly broad. Along with Chamberlain’s personal mounted items with built-in connectivity, it shares the identical MyQ know-how with sister model Liftmaster. Sears’ Craftsman additionally has it personal line of linked openers utilizing a tech it calls AssureLink. You will additionally discover not less than half-a-dozen choices on the retrofit market.

These retrofit gadgets embody GogoGate2, Garageio and others, with costs starting from $89 for the MyQ to $180 or so. Though it is one of many least costly gadgets in its class, the MyQ can be one of many simpler items to put in, requiring no wired connection to your current opener.

The complete MyQ package itself is made up of of two primary hardware elements; a base station that attaches to the ceiling of your storage close to your present opener, and a sensor unit that adheres to the storage door.

Set up ought to take about 15 minutes. Begin by screwing a small bracket to your storage ceiling close to an influence outlet (wooden screws in addition to drywall screws and anchors are included). Slide the bottom station onto the bracket, plug within the energy cable, then hyperlink your telephone, your wi-fi community, and the storage opener to the bottom station, by way of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.

Colin West McDonald/Proinertech

Undergo the everyday iOS or Android Bluetooth pairing course of to hyperlink the gadgets and share your private home Wi-Fi settings between your telephone and the MyQ base station. That step places the hub on the web, granting you entry to your storage door opener from anyplace you will get on-line together with your telephone. Through the MyQ app, you then make an account and add the machine by way of the serial quantity from the bottom unit.

Choose the make and mannequin to your opener throughout the app, after which observe the immediate to hit your opener’s program button. Chamberlain says the MyQ is appropriate with any photoelectric sensor-equipped opener made after 1993. The opener will then broadcast the open/shut code for the hub to memorize. Lastly, connect the door sensor to your storage door by way of the included adhesive strips and hit the check button to pair the sensor to the MyQ hub.

None of those steps are terribly onerous. Sure, you will must stand up on a ladder and drill into the ceiling of your storage (except you mount the hub another manner). There is not any must mess with breaker switches or arduous wiring the hub to something, making it an exception in its class. It matched the photoelectric sign to my Overhead Doorways Overdrive opener on the primary strive.

The MyQ app offers you a good quantity of management and perception into your storage door exercise.

Screenshot by Wealthy Brown/Proinertech

Chamberlain additionally deserves credit score for making the Wi-Fi receiver within the hub moderately robust. My iPhone registers just one bar of Wi-Fi sign energy coming from my home to my indifferent storage, and typically it would not discover the sign in any respect, however I’ve all the time been capable of finding the MyQ remotely and ship indicators to it within the two weeks or in order that I’ve had it put in.

Good, however it might be smarter

As simple as I discovered the MyQ set up, there is no getting round the truth that it is simpler to easily attain up and hit the old-school opener clipped to the windshield visor in my automotive. Changing that routine with an app is not actually the purpose of the MyQ, although.

As an alternative, the concept is that it’s going to allow you to verify the standing of your door remotely, after which do one thing about it in case you do not like what you see. The youngsters left the storage door open? Your neighbor desires to borrow or return a instrument while you’re not round? MyQ allows you to intervene out of your bed room, the seashore, or just about anyplace with Wi-Fi or a mobile information sign.

One usability quirk with the MyQ comes when you may have a number of residents in a house. Through a customized rule I made within the app software program, my MyQ unit will inform me when the door has been open for 45 minutes. My spouse works at dwelling although, so once I get an alert telling me the door is open on a workday, I am by no means precisely certain the place she is or what she is likely to be doing round the home.

This sensor tells the hub whether or not the door is up or down.

Colin West McDonald/Proinertech

I am not frightened about by chance crushing her with the door. Once you inform the app to shut, the MyQ base unit beeps and flashes a lightweight for about 15 seconds earlier than it really begins closing. That and the usual movement sensor already put in throughout the brink of my storage be sure that nobody can be damage or shocked by the MyQ.

But when my spouse is for some purpose relying on the storage door staying in a sure state — perhaps she’s taking in groceries, or enjoying within the driveway with our youngsters — there is no manner for me to see what is going on on remotely by way of the MyQ app.