Podcast #1265: Garage Doors - AV Receivers - Atmos in the Family Room

On today's show we discuss Ara's garage door plan for integrating it into HomeKit, we help a listener decide on which receiver to buy, and we ask whether Atmos is worth it for a family room. We also read your emails and take a look at the week's news.

News:

Get YouTube TV For Just $67.99 a Month Down From $82.99 For The Rest of 2026 How many subscribers do major live TV streamers have? Other:

Bingebuster  THIRDREALITY Smart Garage Door Opener Last week I discussed my garage door situation where MyQ does not integrate with Apple's HomeKit. I explained that I will be using a solution called ratgdo (Rage Against The Garage Door Opener). A few of the listeners emailed and suggested that I look at the ThirdReality Smart Garage Door Opener). Available at Amazon for $50.

Issues for me:

When you install it in Apple home it installs as a lightbulb.  I added it to Home Assistant first because I knew Apple HomeKit was going to treat it like a light instead of a garage door. In Home Assistant, it shows up as a light entity, with the on off state following the tilt sensor. To make it behave like a real garage door, I created a Template Cover helper and set the device class to Garage. For the state, I used the template to report open when the light is on and closed when it's off. Then I set the Open and Close actions to call the light.turn_on service on the light entity, so pressing Open or Close in Home Assistant is basically the same as pressing the garage remote button. After that, it shows up and behaves like a garage door inside Home Assistant, with the right open/closed status based on the tilt sensor. It's mechanical. Batteries After Jorge's email,I am now looking past these issues and considering this solution.

And yet another listener provided even more fuel for this fire!

David writes in and says:

Most door operators have a provision for a wall mounted pushbutton ( the same one used for years).  It's a momentary pushbutton closure. There is a cold contacts switch which operates in the Matter smart home standard.  As a result it works in all the various smart home systems.  It's a Shelly 1 Mini Gen 4 device…about $25.

I have installed mine into my Apple HomeKit system to operate my Genie garage door opener.

There is no sensing of the position of the door in the Shelly 1 Mini Gen 4 - it is only for operating the door.

I have used the IKEA "MYGGBETT" door/window sensor ($10) to sense the position of the door - it is also Matter compliant.  It is th