homebridge-ratgdo is a Homebridge plugin that makes Chamberlain, Liftmaster, and other garage door openers that utilize the Ratgdo hardware control board available to Apple's HomeKit smart home platform. You can determine if your garage door opener by checking the Ratgdo website.
In a nutshell, the aim of this plugin for things to just work with minimal required configuration by users. The goal is to provide as close to a streamlined experience as you would expect from a first-party or native HomeKit solution. For the adventurous, those additional granular options are, of course, available to support more esoteric use cases or other unique needs.
What does just work mean in practice? It means that this plugin will discover all your Ratgdo devices that are running the Ratgdo ESPHome firmware without the need for additional configuration.
I rely on this plugin every day and actively maintain and support it.
In the interest of the community seeking a solution outside of myQ, I've developed a full-featured Homebridge plugin that enables the following features:
- Control of the garage door opener. This includes, for those that have always wanted the feature, the ability to close the garage door without the requisite safety warning and delay that Chamberlain and Liftmaster garage door openers emit when being controlled remotely.
- A motion sensor when it's available.
- Control of the light attached to the garage door opener, when available.
- Obstruction detection.
- Occupancy sensor support.
- Ability to lock and unlock the garage door opener through the ability to lockout wireless remotes.
- Read-only garage door opener support.
- Automation switch and dimmer support, allowing you to set the garage door to any position.
- A rich webUI for configuration.
To get started with homebridge-ratgdo:
- Install
homebridge-ratgdousing the Homebridge webUI. Make sure you makehomebridge-ratgdoa child bridge for the best experience. - Install the ESPHome Ratgdo firmware. You'll need to use Chrome for this as Safari doesn't support installing firmware through a USB serial port.
- Fully open and close the garage door one time. ESPHome Ratgdo will use this to determine how long it takes to open and close your garage door to enable precise control of the position of the garage door opener.
- That's it. Ensure
homebridge-ratgdois running and it will autodiscover your Ratgdo devices and make them available in HomeKit.
Tip
If you would like to tailor your experience a bit further, you can choose to use the hombridge-ratgdo ESPHome YAML configuration file and use it to create a more customized Ratgdo ESPHome firmware. Using this firmware allows you to do the following things for those using Ratgdo hardware revision 2.5 or beyond:
- The ability to customize the name (and friendly name) of the Ratgdo device. Though cosmetic, it can be helpful when you have multiple Ratgdo devices.
- Use SNTP to set the time on the Ratgdo device. Not strictly necessary, but good hygeine.
- Allows you to configure the timezone either yourself or automatically. The timezone will be autoconfigured using the World Time API geoIP by default.
- Set the interval to check for updates from the Ratgdo repository to every 6 hours instead of the Ratgdo default of every second.
Using this YAML is completely optional and largely for cosmetic purposes. There are no functional differences between using this custom YAML configuration and the default Ratgdp ESPHome one.
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Getting Started
- Installation: installing this plugin, including system requirements.
- Plugin Configuration: how to quickly get up and running.
- Changelog: changes and release history of this plugin.
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Additional Topics
- Feature Options: options to allow you further tailor to your needs, particularly for those who want to have enhanced automation support.
- MQTT: how to configure MQTT support.
This is mostly of interest to the true developer nerds amongst us.
