Our old house had a MyQ enabled garage door panel, and it worked PERFECTLY.
(After we added a MyQ Home Bridge, anyway.)
At the new house, our garage is detached. Our wifi signal reaches the garage when the door is open, but not when the door is closed.
Bottom line, MyQ didn't work anymore.
So we had to look into new MyQ devices - and Powerline.
To be clear - our old house's garage door OPENER was not MyQ enabled.
(The garage door openers at our new house aren't either.)
Instead, we used these MyQ Control Panels.
One year we were able to save our friend's Thanksgiving when their oven died - we let them into our house through our garage door, and they finished cooking their feast. MyQ was great!
In the new house, we had TWO garage door openers, NEITHER of which were MyQ enabled.
Simple enough, we get two MyQ panels, and we're good to go, correct? Nah.
The panels were unable to stay connected to the MyQ Home Bridge. The Home Bridge was unable to connect to HomeKit.
All in all, off to a bad start. 2 years passed.
Powerline Wifi
I knew about Powerline internet. Basically, it's 2 network devices, both of which plug into standard electrical outlets.
One connects to your router over ethernet, The other goes to a place where internet isn't reaching - in my case the garage - and plugs into the wall.
Most powerline devices allow an ethernet connection on the other end. SOME actually create a new wifi network on the other side. That's what I needed.
I went with the NETGEAR PLW1000 - a device which creates a new 2.4 and 5 Ghz wifi network in my garage.
It still couldn't find the Home Bridge. I was gonna need new MyQ stuff, frankly.
And I was REALLY surprised at how much simpler and cheaper things had gotten.
MyQ Smart Garage Control
It was $30 at Best Buy, which seemed just shockingly affordable.
I was able to connect my iPhone to the 2.4 Ghz network from my powerline internet, and IMMEDIATELY connect the Smart Garage Control using the MyQ app.
After 2 years of trying to connect the Home Bridge, this was shockingly simple.
I attached the sensor to the garage door, hit the "learn" button on my left garage door, and I was immediately able to control that door with the MyQ app.
Two caveats:
ONE - the Smart Garage control is NOT a HomeKit product.
So, for native MyQ HomeKit control, we were going to have to get that MyQ Home Bridge connected.
I tried for another day, bailed, and connected the MyQ devices through the HomeBridge server running on my QNAP NAS. It was easy, and worked immediately.
TWO - the Smart Garage Control only comes with 1 sensor. If you have 2 garage doors, you're going to need to acquire another sensor.
And, for whatever reason, they really aren't sold separately.
Amazon has the Smart Garage Sensor for sale for $40 - and a Smart Garage Control (w 1 sensor) for $30, the same price it is at Best Buy and everywhere else. That is nonsensical.
It's probably also why eBay and Mercari are filled with Smart Garage Control listings with no sensors included - they bought a second, used the sensor, and are trying to sell the control hub.
(That's what I did, too.)
ONE LAST THING - once you have your MyQ garage loaded into HomeBridge, and working through HomeKit, the Garage Door is going to show up on your CarPlay home screen when you're close to your house.
BUT - if you have 2 connected garage doors, it's only going to show the LAST ONE THAT YOU ADDED. You cannot see both doors, you can't switch between the 2 doors in the settings... it's just the Way Things Are.
This is a CarPlay issue, not a MyQ issue or a Powerline Internet issue. Apple should fix it, and make multiple doors accessible via CarPlay.
But all in all, getting my garage doors into the HomeKit environment was a great project. And all it took was
Getting Powerline Wifi to my detached garage
Getting a new MyQ Smart Garage Controller
Running the MyQ HomeBridge Plug-In
The fact that powerline internet, MyQ, and HomeBridge are all working together (and perfectly!) is frankly kind of shocking. But it worked - call this project complete.
A buying garage door opener provides you easy, dependable operation, reliable, quick access to the home and improves security and also budget-friendly model, there is an opener available which has performance, power and some features useful for home.
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