The HomeKit ecosystem is losing one of its most useful and most reliable accessories. Chamberlain has announced today that it is discontinuing the myQ Home Bridge Hub, which allowed you to control your garage door with HomeKit and Siri.
For those unfamiliar, myQ is Chamberlain’s platform for controlling your garage door using your smartphone. The technology is built into some of Chamberlain’s more modern garage door openers, but the company also sells a retrofit version that adds the technology to older garage door openers.
But that version of the myQ Smart Garage Control hub doesn’t support HomeKit. Instead, the company had been selling a separate myQ Home Bridge Hub with HomeKit support at a higher price point. While the myQ Smart Garage Control sells for $30, the version with HomeKit often sold for as high as $90.
As noted by The Verge, the myQ Home Bridge Hub has been out of stock on the Chamberlain website for several weeks. When asked for comment, Chamberlain confirmed that the product will not be returning and has been discontinued. The company added that existing Home Bridge Hubs already sold will continue to work “for the foreseeable future,” but with no additional details.
According to Rassas, “less than 1 percent of myQ users were using the myQ Home Bridge.” Instead, most were opting for the cheaper and non-HomeKit version.
“As our products continue to evolve, we have decided to discontinue production of our myQ Home Bridge Hubs,” George Rassas, group product manager at Chamberlain Group, said in an email. He also confirmed that existing Home Bridge Hubs will continue to work “for the foreseeable future.”
Will Chamberlain release a new version of its myQ Home Bridge Hub? It doesn’t seem like it. “Our goal is to provide compelling smart home solutions as we continue to work with leading connectivity brands to deliver seamless products and services that complete the smart home,” Rassas said when asked.
Another HomeKit accessory bites the dust. And this time, it leaves a gaping hole in the market. As The Verge points out, Chamberlain controls more than half of the garage door market in the United States.
There are other smart garage door openers on the market with HomeKit support, but we haven’t tested them and can’t vouch for their reliability. Speaking from experience, the myQ Home Bridge Hub was rock solid in terms of reliability and it’s a shame to see it leave the market.
This underscores a major problem with smart home technology. Chamberlain claims the myQ Home Bridge Hub will keep working for now, but what happens when there’s a bug that needs to be fixed? What about a security flaw? The company’s statement doesn’t instill confidence that we’ll see any future updates.
Ideally, Chamberlain could bring HomeKit support to the myQ Smart Garage Control, but it doesn’t seem like that’s in the cards. This is also something that technology such as the Matter smart home standard could solve, but again, Chamberlain doesn’t seem keen on adopting that.
