is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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Garage door opener manufacturer The Chamberlain Group has launched a new version of the communication platform that powers its connected garage door openers — and it’s bad news for smart home users.
The new Security+ 3.0 platform, launching alongside Chamberlain’s latest openers, shuts down the workarounds that third-party accessory makers such as Tailwind, Meross, and Ratgdo developed to let you integrate your garage door with Apple Home, Home Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and others.
Instead, you’re pushed into Chamberlain’s ad-stuffed MyQ app and a short list of partners and integrations, nearly all of which require paid subscriptions and none of which are the major ecosystems. (Controlling your door in the MyQ app itself is still free).
It’s yet another sign that the market leader in garage door openers has no interest in an open, interoperable smart home. Chamberlain is locking users deeper into its proprietary, subscription-centric ecosystem — a trend punctuated by its quiet exit from the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the industry group behind the interoperability smart home standard, Matter. Which, coincidentally, just announced support for garage door controllers.
The garage door wars
For those unfamiliar, let me take you back to 2014, when Chamberlain launched the MyQ Garage, its first smart garage door controller. An accessory device that wirelessly connects to your Chamberlain or Liftmaster (the company’s pro-install line) opener, the MyQ lets you control your door opener from your phone — a huge upgrade that allows you to check on and close your door from anywhere. Subsequently, Chamberlain has integrated MyQ directly into its openers and now has a broad MyQ ecosystem that includes security cameras, video doorbells, and keypads.
Competitors quickly entered the market, including third-party companies with universal controllers that wire into the back of the opener. But these companies soon found that newer Chamberlain openers with the patented Security+ 2.0 technology didn’t work with these dry-contact triggers. So, they developed workarounds, initially by wiring their devices to an aftermarket remote control, then by using a software-based solution to mimic the rolling security codes the wired communication tech uses. This was first implemented by Ratgdo (which stands for Rage Against the Garage Door Opener), after founder Paul Wieland became frustrated by MyQ’s limitations.
Security+ 3.0 slams the door shut
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