An unofficial chapter of the popular Dull Men's Club.
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I didn't take my ADHD medicine today. Went to go get stuff out of my car and ended up with 3 different screwdrivers on the ground trying to unscrew the garage door opener.
The sun-tanning of the plastic was pretty cool. guess it used to be white instead of yellow/tan. Didn't know that.
You know, those Amazon Basics batteries are a poor replacement for Duracells. Batteries are one of the things that I never cheap out on.
I have rechargeable 9 volts
Yep. Manufacturers don't say to use lithium batteries in outdoor devices for no reason.
They're higher capacity, but more importantly they aren't affected as much by frigid temps.
Agreed. Back before I stopped giving Amazon money, I tried a pack of their brand batteries for my bathroom soap dispensers, and they were absolute garbage. They died 2-3x faster than Duracell/Energizer batteries did in those same devices.
Step 1: Add Flux Capacitor
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit?
Well done. That can turn out to be a real pain in the ass.
I tried that on ours, new battery didn't help. When I went shopping for a new external panel, I discovered that the internet connected ones cost about the same. Now I can open and close the garage door from my phone, from anywhere, and the app will tell me if the door is open or closed. This solves my "Did I leave the garage door open? I don't know, have to drive back home now" problem.
Ehh that sounds horrible to me. A simple toggle that grants access to your house, in the hands of an external company doesn't fill me with joy.
I'm sure the convenience is nice however it's been proven time and time again that security is an afterthought for many companies, especially when it's their customers security.
I get it, and no shame on anyone for whom those concerns rise to a level of "Nah, not for me."
It's still plenty more secure than the non-rolling code garage door openers I grew up with. Or, frankly, the external keypad that I had before. Way easier for one of my kids, or inlaws, or inlaws kids, to leak my garage door code - and that kind of leak would be to someone local, who has physical access.
With this service, someone would have to A) get into the service's data to the extent that they could operate an arbitrary garage door, then B) link my account there with my physical address, and C) coordinate physical access to my house, finally D) successfully burgling my house when there is always someone home.
My assessment is that each of those steps is unlikely to happen individually, and even if all four of those steps do happen, the likelihood that I am the arbitrary target isn't terribly high.
Hell, my first car didn't have an internal hood release, you could get into it with a coat hanger, and a swift wrenching on the steering wheel would break the steering lock. I wholly agree that security is often an afterthought, but that's always been the case.
Oh absolutely, my tinfoil hat gets real itchy with devices like this - even with the levels of sanity that you've gone through I couldn't install one on my non existent garage.
My cameras are reolink - running on their own vlan with no internet access. I even host my own time servers for them 😅 Cameras use a local google coral for object / facial recognition and send me alerts via home assistant when I'm not home. They are powered by a POE switch in my rack which has a stupidly large UPS.
My AC have their OEM wifi dongles replaced with ESP32 devices which I manage, my access points run OpenWRT - same with my router.
Any smart globe in my house runs via my own ZigBee network - not the OEMs dongle, same with motion sensors and door sensors.
All the small things I do won't stop a brick coming through one of my windows and someone stepping through the hole they've just made.
There’s always an analog hole.
Aight. That's as boring as replacing smoke alarm batteries.
Smoke alarms don't have replaceable batteries anymore. You just buy them with 10 yr batteries installed. People would take the batteries out and never replace them.
I’ve definitely bought some in the last…4 years that are still standard replaceable 9v only powered. In the US from local hardware stores. A quick amazon search shows i can still buy both types, replaceable 9v and fixed 10 year…
Some states are mandating the 9v style be replaced if they're over a certain age. Check your local and state laws or you could be denied insurance coverage.
your car probably has a homelink built-in garage door opener, take the next step and program it!
Reads like an exciting project. That's against the rules. Please grab a numbered waiting beer, build yourself a chair and wait for someone who may not show up.