myQ Smart Garage Video Keypad Review: I’m At Your Garage Door

Worth When Reviewed

$99.99

Greatest Costs In the present day: myQ Good Storage Video Keypad

$83.93

$99.99

The world has lengthy since come round to doorbells doing double obligation as safety cameras. Chamberlain and its myQ model of good storage door merchandise brings that idea to your storage door with the myQ Good Storage Video Keypad.

It’s a basically easy thought, changing the outside storage door opener keypad you may have already got. The acquainted numeric keypad is replicated on this machine, together with a movement sensor and a 1080p video digital camera with a 160-degree viewing angle (measured diagonally).

The unit is appropriate with LiftMaster, Chamberlain, Craftsman, Raynor, and AccessMaster storage door openers manufactured after 1993, and it requires no direct wiring to the opener; in reality, there’s no everlasting wiring of any sort.

Powered by a beefy lithium-ion battery, which myQ says ought to final for 1 to three months earlier than a recharge is required (relying on frequency of utilization). I’d advise planning forward when endeavor your preliminary battery cost or recharging, nonetheless; after I related it to a PC through a micro-USB cable, the battery took practically 10 hours to completely cost.

Christopher Null/Foundry

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Set up and setup

Charging time apart, set up is an easy course of. If in case you have an older storage door opener, you merely comply with the directions within the myQ cellular app to pair the keypad along with your opener by urgent the be taught button on the unit on the applicable time. New storage door openers which have built-in Wi-Fi can skip this step and pair straight with the keypad.

I examined the keypad with each sorts of opener—an previous Chamberlain and a brand-new myQ-connected Liftmaster—and located the method seamless both means. If in case you have a myQ opener, the method is much more painless, as you needn’t climb a ladder to hit that “be taught” button. Connectivity is through 2.4GHz Wi-Fi solely, however I had no points linking the keypad to my dwelling community.

As soon as configured and up to date with new firmware, the unit mounts to the wall exterior your storage with an included, angled bracket and two screws. (The adjustable myQ “swivel mount” that gives an extra 100 levels of customization, which you’ll see on the corporate’s web site is a separate $30 buy.)

The keypad then affixes to the bracket and could be held in place with an extra screw on the underside of the keypad to stop hooligans from operating off with it.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Day-to-day utilization

Operation is sort of easy from right here: You possibly can open and shut the storage door by tapping within the code you set, and extra visitor PINs will also be added—together with auto-expiring short-term PINs and recurring PINs that permit entry solely on sure days and at sure occasions every week. A complete of 16 PINs could be created.

A telephone button is included that works very like a video doorbell, alerting you in your cell phone that somebody at your storage door, and permitting you to interact a two-way audio function so you’ll be able to resolve if you wish to let the customer into your storage. Notifications can take just a few seconds to achieve your telephone, however I discovered them speedy sufficient for typical use.

Efficiency

The built-in movement sensor is fast to interact and start capturing any exercise round your storage door, and its sensitivity could be adjusted to get rid of false alarms from issues like leaves blowing within the wind. You can too set the machine to alert just for individuals detection, although for my dwelling, I like a broader view that may alert me if both a automotive or an animal arrives within the driveway.

That mentioned, you’ll must rigorously take into account placement if you wish to get a major view of your environment, as a typical set up might be dominated by the storage door to the tune of about 40 % of the video picture.

Video appears to be like surprisingly good for 1080p decision. Daytime clips have been clear and colourful, and commonplace infrared night time imaginative and prescient illuminates nighttime clips crisply to at the very least 30 toes. (When it’s darkish exterior, the keypad additionally lights up when a button is pressed.)

All video is saved on myQ’s cloud service, and if there’s a catch with the machine, that is it. With no native storage choice out there, a plan is required if you wish to do a lot of something other than see a reside stream of video, get movement alerts, and use the two-way audio function.

Christopher Null/Foundry

Individuals detection and video clip storage, playback, and downloading are all locked to a subscription plan. The plan prices $4/month or $40/12 months for a single machine with seven days of historical past included. Improve to $10/month or $100/12 months to assist a number of units with a 30-day storage plan. For a consumer who simply needs the occasional take a look at what’s taking place on the storage door, these are each expensive choices—particularly for those who’re already paying different safety digital camera and doorbell producers for cloud storage.

Subscription probably not non-obligatory

For those who do have a subscription plan—a 30-day trial is included without cost—video recordings are simple to sift by way of through the Historical past tab within the app, and clips are fast to load. Clips are restricted to 50 seconds in size, longer if they’re initiated by somebody urgent the decision button. There’s no official cooldown between clips aside from a 3.5-second timeout required for the system to wake itself again up.

All advised, I encountered only some issues in every day use; specifically, just a few thriller errors sometimes saying “There’s an error along with your keypad” with no additional steering. This normally occurred whereas making an attempt to load a reside stream. A force-quit and restart of the app normally resolved these points.

One caveat price mentioning: it’s necessary to notice that the myQ Video Keypad is an unbiased machine from the myQ Good Storage Management Hub, which helps you to function a storage door opener utilizing your telephone. The 2 units do not work collectively. Particularly, the Video Keypad permits you to open and shut the door by punching in a PIN code straight on the machine whereas additionally offering a video feed to your telephone. However you can not use your telephone to open the storage door for those who solely have the Video Keypad.

To try this, you should even have a separate myQ Good Storage Management hub (or a storage door with myQ inbuilt). It’s a bizarre omission, as you nicely may want to shortly open the door for a customer in entrance of the digital camera, resembling a supply particular person, as an alternative of giving them a PIN (otherwise you won’t have an additional PIN arrange). Needing two units for such a scenario borders on obnoxious.

Must you purchase the myQ Good Storage Video Keypad?

Like all myQ merchandise, the Video Keypad integrates with Ring and Vivint good dwelling environments, in addition to Amazon Key and IFTTT. An costly subscription and one sadly lacking function however, the myQ Good Storage Video Keypad is an efficient worth by itself. For those who use both of the famous ecosystems, it’s much more so.

This text was first printed on TechHive.