For the past four years, I’ve been using a GoControl Z-Wave smart garage door opener. Well, technically, I’ve been using it for about two years but it’s been installed since 2017. Once I moved away from smart home hubs that support Z-Wave, the GoControl has lain dormant. Since I’ve been transitioning over to HomeKit this year, I jumped on an Amazon deal for the Meross Smart Garage Door Opener: Normally priced at $49.99, it was $5 off and I had around $21 in credit card membership points to apply.
Meross has two models of this smart garage door opener available. I bought the one that uses Wi-Fi and works with Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, and Google Home. There’s an older, less expensive model that only works with Amazon and Google smart homes.
The complete package includes the Wi-Fi model with HomeKit QR code, a power brick and USB plug, 25-feet of wire connected to a magnetic sensor, and a second sensor for wall mounting. These two sensors are used to determine if the garage door is open or closed. There’s also some double-sided tape to secure the device.
Right off the bat, this device is much smaller than my old GoControl. That’s not a knock on my old device. It’s more a matter of components for smart devices getting smaller over time. Still, it’s a noticeable difference.
Installation was simple and took me 30 minutes at most. And that includes removing the old garage door opener. Most of these devices are installed the same way: By connecting two wires from the smart garage door opener to a pair of screws on the existing “dumb” garage door opener.
Here’s a look at the two wires from the Meross device I attached to my garage door opener:
Once those wires are connected, I connected one end of the 25-foot sensor wire to the Meross, ran the rest of the wire along the garage door rail, and dropped the hard-wired sensor down. That sensor gets attached to the garage wall and the other sensor is attached to the garage door itself.
After that, I used double-sided tape to temporarily hold the hardwired sensor in place for more testing.
You can see by the leftover tape in the above picture that my first placement wasn’t ideal. Closing the garage door knocked the sensor off the wall. After moving the senor up a little, I had no issues and then secured the senor to the wall with two included screws. When the sensors are close together, the Meross Smart Garage Opener knows that the garage door is closed. When they’re not, the door is open.
With everything wired up, I used the Apple Home app to scan the device’s QR code. The app recognized the device as a garage door controller and connected it to my home’s wireless network.
All I had to do was name the device and add it to a room, which I called “Garage”. This part of the setup was complete in under a minute thanks to the way HomeKit works.
So how does it work? Fantastic, as my wife will attest: She’s been salty for the last two years by not having the smart garage door opener that she used to have. Indeed, I had her test the Meross first by using Siri.
She used voice control on her Apple Watch to tell Siri, “Open garage” and that satisfying noisy sound of the garage door opening was heard. I could see on my own iPhone that the garage door was open as well. My wife closed the garage door, again using voice with her Apple Watch and all was right again in the Tofel household.
I later created some automations for the garage door.
For example, one is to automatically close it after the last person leaves home, just to make sure we don’t leave the door open.
And I was really impressed by the HomeKit app when it suggested some scenes within the context of the device.
This user-friendly approach is sorely needed throughout the smart home industry.
Although I appreciate the HomeKit approach more and more as I add devices that can use it, I’d say the Meross Smart Garage Door Opener is good for non-HomeKit smart homes too.
The application setup may not be quite as user-friendly, but this Wi-Fi device doesn’t require a hub. Note that if you use Amazon Alexa, you’ll need to download a skill to use your voice for opening and closing the garage door as well. Additionally, the Meross mobile app is required in a non-HomeKit situation.
Is this a smart home “must-have”? I can think of higher priorities for those just getting into the smart home scene: Lights, outlets, and security cameras all come to mind. However, it’s convenient to pull up to your house and have your garage door open for you. The price for that convenience isn’t exorbitant either.
How does this compare to the myQ Chamberlain Smart Garage Control?
Does this have the flashing light and audible alarm that the gocontrol has, which is required on unattended garage doors in many locales?
It does not.
You have switched from a UL listed safety device to a “relay in a box” solution. That’s why it’s much smaller and that’s why there is the potential of it crushing somebody under a door. Your garage door is the largest thing that is mechanically moved in your home. There is a lot of testing and research done before a product is allowed to move hundreds of pounds of door. I would not trust a product that has not been as rigorously tested.
This device substitutes for a handheld remote, so it doesn’t bypass any of the safety features built into the garage door motor control itself. The door should still have object detection and bump reversal, for example, as long as those are part of the actual motor control.
What it is missing is a new safety feature that came in with UL 325 specifically aimed at “unattended operation,“ remotes that could operate outside of line of sight.
UL 325 requires that the unattended unit have both a beep and a flashing light for about 15 seconds before the motor control is engaged when an unattended method, like an app, is used. That is intended to alert anyone nearby, or even an animal, that the door is about to close. But the door still moves at its same speed and it still makes its ordinary motor noise, so there has been an argument in many jurisdictions as to whether the UL 325 requirement is really adding anything or not. This is why only a few jurisdictions have made that requirement mandatory as part of their local safety code.
So it is true that the Meross device does not meet the UL 325 safety certification for a remotely operated garage door controller. But it’s not as unsafe as, say, just jumpstarting a garage door motor in a way that bypasses all the existing safety features. The door is still as safe as it was before you added the meross unit with the single exception that you do not get the extra warning when it is activated remotely.
If that feature is important to you then, yes, you need to choose MyQ or the gocontrol unit or another unit that does have the audible and visible warning.
I had this for a while and it worked great, except for the fifty foot long cord that would rip apart because there isn’t a good way to secure it and keep enough slack for the door to open. I switched to the chamberlain myq which is wireless and not much more expensive.
HomeKit needs to come into its own and allow more developers to make great products. Also, the penny-pinching in this article really really makes the writer seem cheap, and cheapens my view of HomeKit and the device.
The security camera and lights mentioned would be a nice move if Apple allowed real manufacturers into their ecosystem instead of their ‘land of misfit toys’ equipment that works with it.
How do any of these controls behave if the internet connection is down? With only a local wifi or Bluetooth connection, I would want to control my devices.
HomeKit runs locally. So will Matter.
Zwave was designed to run locally, but a few zwave hubs, most notably SmartThings, add their own cloud-dependent layer on top of their Z wave devices.
The exact same Meross garage door controller that runs locally with HomeKit will require a cloud connection with smartthings.
So it depends on which platform you use. There are definitely some garage controller options that can operate without an Internet connection, but it depends on your specific setup.