Admittedly I wasn’t too hit with the Chamberlain MyQ internet rage as I only have dumb controls connected to my Chamberlain garage door opener, but it got me looking into options for adding some additional controls to my garage door. So taking cues from the internet, and with a little review of my garage door opener (It’s Security+ 1.0) I went ahead and ordered a ratgdo.
What’s ratgdo? It’s birthed out of the Chamberlain MyQ API closure, and involved reverse-engineering the communication protocol for the garage door opener and getting that integrated into a little ESP board. The solution can be tied into MQTT, Homekit, or ESPHome, and it’s all open source and offline, no cloud required to access the features. When connected to a garage door opener without a control panel, it emulates one, giving you access to a ton of additional features like wireless remote lockout, door position, light control, etc.
My board just came in yesterday after a short 2 week wait for transit from the US, and I flashed it this morning and went through the install process. For the software side I just used the web flasher, and within about 10 minutes I was able to get the device adopted into my ESPHome install.
Probably should have wiped down the cover first…
On the hardware side, it was just as easy and over in about 10 minutes. With tool-less terminals on both the garage door opener and the ratgdo board I connected the 3 wires from the wiring harness into the garage door opener, and decided to pass the wall button through the wall button terminals on the control board. All that was left was to secure the board to the light cover with a zip tie, and connect the power. The only additional thing that needed to be done was to calibrate the door opening and closing, and that was accomplished by opening and closing the door.
I may still consider a small 3D printed case to better secure the board to the outside of the opener and improve the cabling, and maybe trim my leads for my wall button, but the recommended method is to zip tie it to the light cover, so we’ll keep it like this for now.
Home Assistant controls
I’ll be building automations over the next little bit, but I think the big planned one is going to be notifying if the garage door is open for more than 5 minutes, along with an action on the notification to close the door if necessary. There’s consideration in putting in a check that if one or both of us is at home, send the notification, otherwise if we’re not, just close it. I’ll probably also put in a check during our bedtime automation to ensure the door is closed as well.