The Chamberlain Group, renowned for its garage door openers, has rolled out an updated communication system for its smart devices, sparking concern among smart home enthusiasts.

This new Security+ 3.0 platform, released alongside Chamberlain’s latest openers, effectively blocks the workarounds that third-party accessory makers like Tailwind, Meross, and Ratgdo have devised. These solutions previously allowed users to integrate their garage doors with popular smart home platforms such as Apple Home, Home Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home.

Instead, users are now steered towards Chamberlain’s MyQ app, which is filled with ads and offers limited integration options, most of which necessitate paid subscriptions. Notably, controlling the garage door within the MyQ app remains free of charge.

This move underscores Chamberlain’s lack of interest in fostering an open, interoperable smart home environment. By further entrenching users within its proprietary, subscription-focused ecosystem, Chamberlain has even withdrawn from the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization behind the interoperability standard Matter. This departure is particularly notable as Matter has just included support for garage door controllers.

To provide some context, in 2014, Chamberlain introduced the MyQ Garage, its inaugural smart garage door controller. This device, which connects wirelessly to Chamberlain or LiftMaster (Chamberlain’s professional line) openers, allowed users to control their garage doors from their smartphones, offering the convenience of remote access. Over the years, Chamberlain has expanded the MyQ system to include a range of products like security cameras, video doorbells, and keypads.

As the market evolved, competitors emerged, including those offering universal controllers that tapped into the back of the openers. However, these rivals encountered challenges with Chamberlain’s newer openers, equipped with patented Security+ 2.0 technology, which did not function with these simple triggers. As a result, they crafted alternative solutions, initially by connecting their devices to aftermarket remote controls, and later by emulating the rolling security codes through software. This innovative approach was pioneered by Ratgdo, a company founded by Paul Wieland, who was frustrated with the constraints of MyQ.

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.

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.