May 5, 2024 | Tech Tips
Fixing what MyQ, SimpleCommands et. al have broken
As most of us are aware, Chamberlain and MyQ has screwed most who have the MyQ garage opener. And, sadly, the easiest workaround which used the SimpleCommands app, is now dead. There’s been little to help in this area over the last couple of years. I decided in May of 2024 to have a look to see if anyone had come up with something, and sure enough, AlexInDC on Reddit came up with a unique workaround. A big thanks to Alex.
There’s a couple choices you’ll make here. The first, is just to follow the modified instructions from Reddit and use that on it’s own. For a more automated solution, you’ll need to have a Homebridge server setup, and link that to an automation in the Apple Home app. You’ll also create a couple of Siri Shortcuts. Unlike the SimpleCommands solution, which required no user interaction, the Reddit solution requires voice interaction and if you add the Homebridge part you’ll still need voice interaction, too. The big difference is with the Homebridge part, you can use geolocation to trigger the start of the solution. In the long run, you may find it simpler and easier just to use a physical remote with the MyQ. But, for those who find technology fun, this one will never break unless Apple does something to make it so. There’s no third party app like SimpleCommands and there’s no need for the MyQ API. It’s all part of Apple’s iOS and, it works! If you’re an Android person, sorry, but I don’t have anything for you, stop here. Otherwise, proceed.
Open or Close the Garage with Just Voice Control and MyQ App
- Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone. In the upper right hand corner, click the + to add a new Shortcut. One of the choices in iOS 17 will be Open App. In older iOS, you may have to search for that and then choose it.
Open App in New Shortcut
2. Click on the App variable
Select the App variable
3. Select myQ from the list of apps
Select myQ
4. Shortcut now shows myQ as selected app
myQ selected
5. Click Done in upper right corner of previous image. You might also click the down arrow by “Open App” then rename this shortcut to something that makes more sense. I name it MyQ.
Setting Up Voice Control
Open the Settings app on your iPhone. Select Accessibility. Turn the Voice Control slider on.
Turn Voice Control on
2. Leave Accessibility running in the background and open the MyQ app. Since Voice Control should now be on (indicated by a small waveform icon in the upper left of your phone’s Home screen, say “Show Grid.” Take note of the grid numbers within the circle of the garage. With a single garage, the grid numbers to take note of are typically 18 and 19.
The MyQ screen showing the grid.
3. Once you’ve noted the grid numbers, say “Hide Grid.” The numbered squares will disappear.
4. Return to the Accessibility app and Voice Control. Select the Commands option, then Create New Command
Creating a New Command
5. With the New Command screen open you will need two of the three options as shown (a Phrase, I use the name of my car; an Action, in this case recording commands. You can leave the Application set to Any.
Two of the three choices are needed
6. From the Action screen, you want Playback Recorded Commands, but you cannot select that. Instead, follow the directions beneath that choice that begins “To use Recorded Commands…”
7. You’ll be making a recording. I suggest practicing what you’ll say, first. It will help you set the pace of your speech. The recording should contain, “Show Grid, Tap xx (probably 18 or 19 from 2. above.) When you’ve made your recording, tap Save. I had to do this a couple of times, hence the suggestion to practice your speech first.
Now, when you approach or leave your garage, you can say “Siri (or Hey Siri) name you used for the Phrase in 5. above. In my case, I say “Hey Siri, MyQ” a brief pause and “Prius” (the phrase I used.) Your MyQ should now either open or close depending on what state (open or closed) it’s in.
Open the Garage with GeoLocation, Voice Control and MyQ App (I always use the remote to close mine.)
This section assumes you’ve setup Homebridge and installed the dummy switch.
- In the Home app on your iPhone, create a new Add Automation by selecting that from the + in the upper right hand corner.
Adding a new Automation in the Home app
2. On the Events screen of the New Automation you can choose either People Arrive or When The First Person Arrives Home on the screen. I use the former.
The Event Choice of the New Automation
3. When Anyone Arrives Home, I have the Dummy Switch change to On. You have to do this for GeoLocation because Apple restricts what can happen automatically via Shortcuts without the user having to OK a Location action. Apple does allow an accessory to be manipulated without user interaction. This is the entire reason for setting up Homebridge and the Dummy Switch. I leave the switch on for one minute.
Set the Dummy Switch On.
Enhancing and Adding Shortcuts for GeoLocation
4. With the Dummy Switch on this will trigger a Shortcut to run. In this case the Shortcut is about what to do first.
Actions triggered by Dummy Switch on.
5. The enhanced MyQ action utilizes the Voice Control from the first section, Open or Close the Garage with Just Voice Control and MyQ App.
Enhanced MyQ Shortcut
6. Siri will prompt you for the name of the Voice Control you created. Again, for me, that’s the single word “Prius.” Once you provide that, with the Shortcut having turned Voice Control On, your Garage Door will open when you speak and arrive home.
That’s it folks. This works really well and again, unless Apple breaks something it will continue to work without third party apps such as SimpleCommands, IFTTT or anything.
If this helped you, Buy Me a Coffee, please.
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Nov 1, 2022 | Tech Tips
Have you upgraded your iPhone to iOS 16 or your iPad to iPadOS 16 only to find your randomize wallpaper siri shortcut is broken? Me, too!! I used a siri shortcut to change the Wallpaper daily at Sunrise. I have a Photos album called Wallpapers (which I use instead of the Recent Items in the original shortcut. You can choose any album in your Photos Library.), the automation runs every day, and the wallpaper would be something new each day. Fun and much less boring than the same thing every day. It’s what I have done on my Mac desktop for years. Then, with the 16s, I found when the shortcut ran, it just left a black screen, no image. What an annoyance.
After searching for a few weeks, there seems to be a solution. First, get this shortcut, Randomize Wallpaper. Next, you’ll have to duplicate it, at least once (I kept the original for reference, and duplicated it twice. I renamed one “Randomize Lock Screen Wallpaper” and the other “Randomize Home Wallpaper.” Getting the idea? In the original shortcut, in iOS 15 and below, the automation would run the original shortcut and set both the lock screen and the home screen to one image. That now fails in 16 and both just become black. But, if you edit the duplicates (or one duplicate and the original) to just set the wallpaper for either Home or Lock and the other to set the other wallpaper, that appears to work.
So now, in the Automations section of Shortcuts, the Sunrise action, runs the two shortcuts and now you can have two separate images on Lock and Home. Your two shortcuts should look like this:
Jul 28, 2021 | Tech Tips
**Oct. 27, 2023 — This procedure appears to be officially dead as both SimpleCommands and LiveKey apparently are no longer working. LiveKey now says the service is inactive and is no longer available on the iOS app store. SimpleCommands is still on the iOS app store, but no longer will login. SimpleCommands support seems to continue to work for some reason.
**Nov. 28th, 2022 — The instructions for using Alexa to control your MyQ Garage Door Opener with geofencing, no confirmation required (which Siri Shortcuts do require unless you install HomeBridge with a Dummy Switch,) can be found here. You will need to install SimpleCommands or LiveKey (which is the newer version of SimpleCommands.) Alexa will not open the garage by itself, just as HomeKit will not, for privacy reasons. But, that’s not why you’re here, is it? 😎
**As of 8/23/2021, due to MyQ Chamberlain making changes to their login, this procedure does not work. I’ll post back when there is a fix.** (See the orginal post)
If you’ve read and used the previous post on using Alexa with MyQ, you may have noticed the integration with SimpleCommands has broken over the last couple of weeks. This is not the first time that’s happened. There is a fix. Build your own custom skill with Alexa.
This may sound daunting, but I promise, if you can follow directions, you’ll have it up and running in less than an hour. In many cases, less than 30 minutes. Here we go:
1. Download the code (makes things easier).
– Go to https://github.com/spenwall/myq-alexa
– Click the green “Code” button and click Download ZIP.
– Unzip the downloaded file.
2. Go to the Alexa Developer page
– Go to https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/ask
– You’ll need to login to your Amazon account. I’m not sure, but you WILL need to register for a developer account as well. It’s free.
3. Create a skill
The link above will take you to the Developer Console page. On this page…
– Click the Create Skill button.
– On the Create a new skill page, enter/select the following…
- Skill name: Enter a name for your skill. For example, “MyQ Garage Door”.
- Primary locale: English (US) (this is the default); (if you’re Canadian, change that to English (CA), etc.)
- Choose a model to add to your skill: Custom (this is the default)
- Choose a method to host your skill’s backend resources: Alexa-hosted (Node.js) (this is the default)
- Click the “Create skill” button at the top right of the page.
- On the next page, Choose the Start From Scratch template (this is the default)
4. Add Interaction Model
At this point, you’ll be on the Custom Skill Builder page.
– On the menu on the left side of the page…
- Click Invocations > Skill Invocation Name. Under “Skill Invocation Name”, enter “garage door”.
- Under Interaction Model, Click Intents > JSON Editor.
- Open the alexa.json file (downloaded in step 1) in Notepad (or your favorite text editor). Select all the text in the file, and hit Copy (Ctrl-C).
- In the JSON Editor, Select all the text in the editor and hit Paste (Ctrl-V) to replace all the text in the window with the text from alexa.json.
- You may optionally change the invocation name to something like “garage door” (or whatever you like) by editing line 4 in the window to say…
“invocationName”: “garage door”,
– Finally, click the “Build Model” button at the top of the page.
5. Add the Code
– Click on the word Code at the top of the page (it’s in the black area at the very top of the page.)
– On the list of files at the left side of the page, double-click on index.js.
– As above, open the downloaded file “index.js” in Notepad, and Copy all the text from the file. (Select all then Ctrl-C.) Then paste the text into the window. (Select all then Ctrl-V.)
– In the window, on lines 8 & 9, enter your email & password for your MyQ account.
– Click the Save button at the top of the page.
– On the list of files at the left side of the page, double-click on package.json.
– As above open the downloaded file “package.json” in Notepad, and Copy all the text from the file. (Select all then Ctrl-C.) Then paste the text into the window. (Select all then Ctrl-V.)
– IF you changed the “invocationName” in step 4, you’ll edit line 2 in the window and paste the same name in. For example, if you changed the invocation name to the following:
“invocationName”: “garage door”,
Then you’ll need to change line 2 to the following:
“name”: “garage-door”,
(Note that it’s the same name, but all spaces are replaced with hyphens.)
– Click the Save button at the top of the page.
6. Deploy
Hit the Deploy button at the top of the page and let it build.
7. Test
– Click on the word Test at the top of the page (it’s in the black area at the very top of the page.)
– Next to “Skill testing is enabled in:”, select “Development”.
– In the “Type of click and hold the mic” button, enter a command like “Ask garage door to open”. (You can also use a mic to say this command.)
– You should hear your garage door open.
This didn’t work at first for me. So I had to do the following…
– Click on the word Code at the top of the page.
– On the list of files at the left side of the page, double-click on index.js.
– Change line 28
From…
return result.devices[1].serial_number;
To…
return result.devices[0].serial_number;
Click Save & Deploy again.
– Try step 7 again. It worked for me after doing this.
8. Use it on Alexa
At this point, your skill is attached to your Amazon account. All Alexa devices that are registered to this account automatically have access to this skill. You can say the following commands:
– “Alexa ask garage door to open”
– “Alexa ask garage door to close”
– “Alexa ask garage door status”
You can see your skill by…
– Open the Alexa app.
– Go to Skills & Games
– Click on Your Skills.
– At the top, where it has boxes for Enabled, Updated, etc, scroll the boxes to the left until you see Dev and touch that box.
– You should see your new MyQ Garage Door skill.
Your skill is in Developer mode which means it’s private. It has not been published to the Skills section of Alexa so nobody else can get to it. (Make sure that you do not go into the Distribution section and Distribute your skill. That would enable others to open and close your garage door!
Finally, if you want to create a Routine in Alexa, the actual skill will not be available because it’s in Developer mode. So for the Action, instead of using a Skill, you’ll need to use a Custom Action and type in “Ask garage door to open”. It works fine.
I hope this helps.
You can find other tips by going to the blog homepage. You can find iHelp’s main offerings, here.
Jul 18, 2020 | Tech Info
On July 14, 2020 I received a note from Google they would be phasing out Google Play Music later this year (to be determined) in favor of YouTube Music. They offer a one-click method of transferring your music from Google Play Music (GPM) to YouTube Music (YTM.) Be very careful if you choose to do so.
Google Play Music
I noticed today, in my playlists uploaded from iTunes to GPM many songs were repeated as many as four or five times. Not sure why that happened. There are some Python scripts available online to deal with this, but the easier method, IMO, is to just delete everything uploaded and upload it again. Hopefully, with the new upload it won’t create the duplicates. When you delete your uploaded Library, Google tells you it can take several hours to sync out, so don’t start uploading your music again until you’re sure the old is gone. Easy to verify in a browser.
YouTube Music
This is the problem I’ve encountered with YouTube Music. It’s twofold. One, there is no way to delete an entire Library in YTM at the moment. So all those playlists that transferred from GPM have all the duplicates and Google says the only way to deal with that is one-by-one. Now, that could be a royal pain!
Problem #2. With GPM, there appears to be a time limit on how long even your own uploaded music will play without a subscription. With GPM, I’ve literally had music play all day long. But, as I started deleting my Library today, naturally GPM stopped. So, I switched to YTM. After about an hour, it stopped. I played the next song in the queue figuring it was a hiccup. Nope. After one more song, it quit again.
The moral: Google like all the other services, won’t let you play unlimited music on YTM without paying them. And, if there are errors in the Library, such as multiple dupes in the playlists, there’s no way, including deleting the entire Library like in GPM to deal with it.
Consider yourself cautioned.
You can find other tips by going to the blog homepage. You can find iHelp’s main offerings, here.
Jul 3, 2020 | Tech Tips
I’ve always thought Siri was lame compared to Alexa. Shortcuts for MyQ has totally changed my mind about that. In case you don’t know about Shortcuts they were introduced at the Apple WWDC in 2018 for iOS 12 and above. (I’ve decided I will use iOS to mean both iOS or iPadOS.) Shortcuts automate things and available for many things. The official Apple Shortcuts are referred to as Trusted. Shortcuts from third parties, since they are untested officially by Apple are referred to as Untrusted Shortcuts. Use them at your own risk, but in many cases, using some common sense, Untrusted Shortcuts just make life simpler. The best analogy I can offer is if you’ve ever gone to macscipter.net to get AppleScript help, same difference. On your iPhone, you will have to enable Untrusted Shortcuts. From Settings, go to Shortcuts then enable it here:
**Jump to **September 1, 2021 Addendum. This is the most reliable means of using Siri Shortcuts for MyQ garage. You must install the Dummy Switch to make this work automatically due to privacy limitations imposed by Apple.
I’ve found two different versions of the MyQ garage Shortcuts. The first, you’ll have to input your myliftmaster.com email address, password and name of your device (it’s displayed when you login to myliftmaster.com) on all three Shortcuts, Open, Close & Toggle. But, those Shortcuts also work on Apple Watch whereas, for me, the improved Shortcuts work on the iPhone but not the Apple Watch. The improved ones have one Shortcut where you enter your myliftmaster.com info, then the working Shortcuts, Open, Close, Status & Hub use the info in the Setup Shortcut.
As from the Can Alexa Control my MyQ Garage Door Opener? post, if you use SimpleCommands with a location trigger, you’ll never have to talk to either Siri or Alexa. But, using your iPhone or Apple Watch can be much easier and perhaps more reliable than your Echo device. (I’ve had an Echo Auto since before they were released in the general population and it’s routinely flakey.) Now, you have a choice.
July 15, 2021 Addendum
If you discovered the shortcuts are no longer working as of this date, it’s because MyQ changed the API. Go into the shortcut and change the API text to JVM/G9Nwih5BwKgNCjLxiFUQxQijAebyyg8QUHr7JOrP+tuPb8iHfRHKwTmDzHOu, This will work, and with the newer Automation control in Shortcuts, you can automate this via Geofencing and you don’t need SimpleCommands, Alexa or Google Assistant for it to work.
**September 1, 2021 Addendum
There has not been a fix posted as of this date related to the original post and Siri Shortcuts. But there is a workaround with additional capabilities.
The HomeBridge project was designed to provide integration for smart home devices which are not natively supported by HomeKit. This includes MyQ as well as several other popular brands. At the bottom of the linked page, you’ll find installers for a variety of operating systems, including macOS and Windows. Simply click the OS you need. This will take you to a GitHub page with easy to follow instructions. Should take the average person, even someone who may not be all that comfortable with technology, about 10-15 minutes total. One caveat, HomeBridge does need to run as a constant service, so if you have a computer that pretty much runs 24/7, then this is a great solution.
Once installed, you can search for the MyQ plugin or any other plugin which is supported. I added MyQ, TP-Link Kasa and Wyze. Now, a bunch of my devices can be controlled by Siri. Another added benefit, you don’t need to add Shortcuts. Once you have the devices added to Home you can simply say “Hey Siri, open garage” and she will comply (of course, you have to create an open or close scene in Home first.) I haven’t had a chance to test geofencing yet, but from the looks of some of the Automations built in to Home, I’m thinking it should work. If not, I’ll post another Addendum with a work around. Another nice benefit, if you have multiple smart devices in a room you’ve added, you can ask Siri to turn on the room and she’ll start everything in that room!
Good luck! I’m hoping HomeBridge will also solve future MyQ API problems which might crop up. Fingers crossed.
September 4, 2021 Addendum
Just like Siri Shortcuts, if a location trigger in Home is aimed at opening the home, such as what happens with the garage door, the user WILL NEED to confirm that trigger via a notification. So, no, it does not work in Home. But, there is an alternative THAT DOES!
If you’ve installed Homebridge, as outlined in the September 1, 2021 Addendum, you’ll want to add the plugin for a dummy switch. After the install is complete, you can give it any name that makes sense to you when the configuration pops up. That’s all the configuration you will do. Restart Homebridge and the Dummy Switch or whatever name you gave it will appear in the Home app on your Apple device.
Now, for the triggers where you won’t have to confirm anything. You’ll create two automations in the Home app. The first one, is the location trigger, “When Anyone Arrives Home.” Point that to the dummy switch and have it turn on. I set it to turn back off in two minutes, but you can pick any time frame you want. The second automation is the “An Accessory is Controlled” one. For this, you’ll set it up so that when the dummy switch turns on, it activates the garage door opener to an Open position. That’s it! When you get close to your home, the dummy switch turns on and activates the open on the garage.
September 18, 2021 Addendum
You can use SimpleCommands to produce Siri Shortcuts that work. See this. (As of Oct. 27, 2023, SimpleCommands appears to be dead.)
September 11, 2023
SimpleCommands is broken again. The most reliable means seems to be using the HomeBridge project.
October 27, 2023
The MyQ API appears to have another new change, such that, when using Homebridge with the MyQ plugin (v. 3.4.3) only produces error 429. There are some postings on the MyQ plugin Discord saying by downgrading the MyQ plugin to v.3.4.2 and waiting up to 24 hours that plugin version will finally login to the MyQ API. Use at your own risk.
You can find other tips by going to the blog homepage. You can find iHelp’s main offerings, here.
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