CJ on Tech

You have, by now, heard the news that the MyQ garage door openers by Chamberlain have disabled/prevented the use of Smarthome platforms like Home Assistant. The lesson from this, is to stop purchasing devices that require a companies cloud service to function. Yes, I am looking at you Google Nest, and Chamberlain, and so on.

I personally purchased two of these garage door openers for our home because of the MyQ features and the ability to integrate with Home Assistant (my smarthome platform of choice). The integration never worked very well, and because of its dependency on the cloud and difficulty connecting to my WiFi network, I have had it connected in more than 3 years.

There is a lesson in this. Offering a cloud option is great. Keyword being “option”. Requiring the cloud and the installation of another app on a users device that is still only designed with a single user in mind has to stop. I am not bashing the “cloud”, or services in the cloud, where it makes sense.

The key here is making a poorly designed, insecure application, that doesn’t account for multiple users in a household, and REQUIRES using the companies badly designed infrastructure is destined for failure. That failure through bankruptcy, planned obsolescence, and data scraping has to stop. No one needs metrics on when I open and close my garage door, or the temperature of my house, or whether or not I am home.

I stopped buying any product for my smarthome that operates parts of our home itself (lights, heating & cooling, garage door, etc.) that have any cloud requirement. Offer it as an option, and many do, just don’t make it a requirement. Be very clear about why using that cloud offering is a benefit and how data will be used and stop just collecting data.

Am I ranting? Perhaps. Is this reasonable? Definitely. Too often we take for granted what the device purchases do to privacy and security. Take the MyQ cloud application. Giving this access to Chamberlain, how long do you think it will take before they are compromised? How much more time before a bad actor figures out how to issue an open command to all connected devices?

When looking at and choosing devices for your home, especially “smart” devices, consider how they are to be used. Ignore the smarthome idea for a few minutes. Take a new garage door opener, regardless of brand. Under what conditions do YOU WANT it to actually open and close? DO multiple people live in your household that will need to operate it? Are there children? All important details to think about. Add to that; is there an app? Does that app account for multiple users? How does the app communicate? Cloud or just over WiFi?

Ask lots of questions. Don’t just buy what the salesperson tells you to buy. Do your homework. Know what you are getting, and what you are getting into. For lights there are devices like the Shelly1 that will fit behind an existing wall switch. There is a cloud option, but it isn’t required. There is an app that will work with or without the cloud. The device has local control so will work with a variety of smarthome platforms if desired.

There is choice, and there are devices made meeting these aspects. In the end, a smarthome will utilize the cloud for certain services, such as weather, and notifications, or having information that isn’t device dependant or doesn’t use a device within the home. In the event that the internet connection is not functional, then devices with a cloud requirement have limited functionality or may not function at all. Those devices, should be avoided.

Here is a brief list of devices I am using that offer cloud functionality as an option. None of these devices require the use of the cloud funcationality.

• Shelly
• LiFX
• ESP8266 and ESP32 based devices (ESPHome)
• Epson Workforce series printers

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are all brands of devices I use that do not have any cloud requirement to function for my smarthome.