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 becamefrustrated by MyQ’s limitations.

Meanwhile, Chamberlain, which was sold to private equity firm Blackstone in 2021, began locking down its MyQ technology, which it had been building directly into its openers. It discontinued its Apple HomeKit bridge, ended its Google Assistant integration (after first trying to make people pay for it), and blocked unofficial Home Assistant integrations. Today, most of the integrations it supports require a subscription or are tied to paid services such as Amazon Key. These moves only made aftermarket controllers more appealing to those who wanted to decide for themselves how to control the hardware in their garages.

Security+ 3.0 slams the door shut

With Security+ 3.0, the workarounds those controllers developed stopped working. “Any aftermarket controller, such as Ratgdo, Tailwind, Meross, Konnected.io, none of those will work with Security 3.0 devices,” Scott Riesebosch, president of Tailwind, explained to The Verge in an interview. “And there’s no possibility of any firmware updates to any of those products that will work, because those devices all communicate by a wired communication channel.”

I asked Chamberlain if this was the case. “Our approach to third-party partner integration remains the same,” Christina Marenson, senior manager of marketing and PR for Chamberlain Group, said in an email. “We’re focused on delivering the most secure and seamless experience for all users, and that means we can only allow approved integrations including Alarm.com, Resideo, Ring, Vivint and IFTTT.”

Security+ 3.0 is a complete revamp of the company’s communication technology and comes with new hardware that Marenson says is “modernizing the industrial design of our hardware for a contemporary smart home ecosystem.” That hardware includes new remotes and keypads that can be assigned to specific people, so you know who opened the door and when.

Technically, the big change is a shift to fully wireless communication; wired connections now only power the opener and safety sensors. “Our communication architecture continues to leverage rolling code technology encryption, now augmented with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) operating at 2.4 GHz to provide a more secure handshake, faster provisioning, and extended range,” says Marenson.

It’s that patented rolling code tech that made it hard for third-party devices to work with MyQ products. And while their software-based workarounds relied on wireline communication, now that everything is wireless, those solutions won’t work with the new devices.

Konnected.io founder Nate Clark, whose blaQ controller works with Chamberlain openers, confirmed this on Konnected’s community forum, writing that this “is an intentional move by Chamberlain/LM to lock you in to MyQ.”

For many Chamberlain customers, the MyQ app is fine — as long as they can deal with the constant, intrusive ads and upsells for cloud video storage from MyQ’s cameras, many of which are now integrated into the openers. But there are plenty of users who don’t want to use multiple apps to control their homes, don’t want critical access devices tied to the cloud, and prefer to integrate everything into one smart home ecosystem.

Today, MyQ doesn’t work with the most popular home automation platforms, such as Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home. Its connections are largely through subscription-based security companies like Alarm.com and Vivint. It doesn’t support free services such as CarPlay or Android Auto; instead, partnering directly with automakers, including Honda and Volkswagen, which charge a subscription of around $50 a year to open your garage door from the screen in your car. (Chamberlain does work with the free HomeLink solution, a proprietary platform that uses an in-car button to connect to openers locally and through the cloud.)

It seems likely that these are all partnerships that pad the company’s bottom line in ways that more open platforms don’t.

What are your options?

While Chamberlain has a US-market share of over 70 percent, there are alternatives. Riesebosch praises Genie and its Aladdin connectivity platform for its more open approach to the smart home. Lock-maker Kwikset recently launched an opener, which it says will be Matter-compatible.

Still, if you find yourself with a Chamberlain Group Security+ 3.0 garage door opener (the easiest way to identify one is to look at the learn button; white round means 3.0, yellow means 2.0), aftermarket manufacturers are working on solutions. However, Riesebosch says it will be difficult. “Chamberlain has put up some pretty big barriers.”

One of these is a new validation check that phones home to confirm that any remote or accessory trying to connect to the opener is made by Chamberlain and not a counterfeit, duplicate, or clone. Marenson said that this cloud-based authentication was introduced with Security+ 3.0 due to “a growing presence of counterfeit accessories … that do not meet the performance, security, and reliability standards of the myQ ecosystem,” and it’s designed to “protect our consumers and maintain the integrity of our trusted myQ user experience.”

If you’re handy, you could hack a Chamberlain Security+ 3.0 remote by soldering the wires to connect it to your controller of choice. But there may be a simpler solution.

Third Reality’s new $50 smart garage door controller is a super simple gadget that’s basically a box that holds your garage door remote and uses a mechanical finger to push the button. It supports Matter, so it works with Apple Home, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, Home Assistant, etc., giving you full smart home control.

Chamberlain’s new remotes for its Security+ 3.0 line appear to be similar in size to the existing ones, so they should fit inside this gadget. I would love to see how Chamberlain plans to block this workaround.

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• Jennifer Pattison Tuohy