myQ Smart Garage Door Video Keypad with Wide-Angle Camera,Customizable PIN Codes,and Smartphone Control–Take Charge of Your Garage Access Works with Chamberlain, LiftMaster and Craftsman openers,White

We have a liftMater Q garage door opener, and a standard keypad that would not allow us to create temporary codes for anyone entering our home. So we got this. I will say, I watched a YouTube video on how to install it, and was surprised as to how easy it was. Power it on, follow the step by step instructions, connect it to the garage door opener (that was the hard part. I couldn't find the "learn button" - thank you Google!" and it was connected it. Attaching it to the wall was also easy. Now, if I need to provide access to my home, I can do so without changing my primary garage door code. :-)

This review is for the video keypad. I had high hopes for this product and assumed there are some things it could do (but didn't research enough) and if you do too please read.The things it CAN'T do:1. OPEN or CLOSE your garage door via the app. Considering this is a "smart" garage door opener, you might think like I did that it can open and close your garage door via the app. You would be wrong. The keypad can open and close your door if you manually type in the passcode and the keypad is programmable via the app and you can view the camera via the app but for whatever reason (I assume a money grab) they did not enable the ability to open or close the door via the app. Their incompetent "support" people will argue that it CAN'T be done without buying additional hardware but that is nonsense. The keypad can open/close the door and the app can talk to the keypad so this CAN be done they just clearly chose not to enable it. I understand the keypad has no way of knowing for sure if the door is truly open or closed but it doesn't need to, I can see that via the camera. The app simply needs to make it issue a "toggle" command just the same as if you entered the passcode. Imagine how frustrated you will be when you get to work and take a look at the video via the app to see you left the door up and have no way to shut it. This is simply inexcusable.2. It can't work with Alexa.3. It can't work with Google Home.4. It can't reliably alert you that someone (or a vehicle) is in front of the camera. I have all the sensitivity levels maxed out and my daughter just drove home right in front of the camera and then walked inside right in front of the camera and it never alerted me. I have notifications set to alert me on all motion not just people. If you stand in front of the camera and look directly at it for several seconds it will finally alert you. The timestamp however is off by an hour and I see no way to change that. UPS also delivered a package, parking directly in a zone marked active for notification and it never alerted me.5. It can't store anything for free. If you want any type of storage for video or entry events you must pay monthly (or yearly) for their cloud storage plan.6. It can't record your video 24/7. I was prepared to pay for their cloud product that gives you 7 or 30 days of storage until I found out that it only saves a few seconds when it sees an alert (which is almost never) and not 24/7. I was hoping to use this in case anything was ever messed with around the house I could rewind the video and see what happened but that is not possible. I will not be paying for the cloud storage.Do not be fooled by the 4.4 star rating with 27,000 reviews. They deceptively listed this along with their old school "dumb" keypad which I'm sure was a great keypad and the one I wish I had bought. Amazon should not allow this type of thing. Be sure to read the reviews for the video keypad if that is what you want to buy.Things it can do.1. Open the garage door when you enter the code on the keypad.2. Show you a live video of the camera.I do not recommend unless you only need these 2 things.

A decent alternative to many other options. This has a battery pack that lasts about 4-6 weeks and is rechargeable. Has a plastic mount that angles out about 15 degrees, which would be better if it was adjustable out of the box. You can buy another base that adjusts for more money. You'll want a second battery pack, sold separately. The keypad is durable and has good return on the buttons. The camera is good and gives sharp clarity. You can pay more for the service to have online phone access. Everything is a la cart.

I’m going to review this in order of impressions, from unboxing to final installation. The packaging is functional and protective, but 100% utilitarian. You’re not going to confuse this for an Apple or Samsung product. The only instructions in the box consists of a QR code on a sheet of paper that links you to an online PDF. I’m old school enough that I like having a sheet I can hold, but it’s obviously not a deal breaker. The online doc is clear, and answers any question you might have—if at first you don’t think it’s on there, read through again since you probably missed it (like I did).The main unit is nice and solid, and feels like a quality piece of electronics. It’s comes with a protective plastic film on the camera, so make sure to take that off. The battery is both good and bad—I like that it has a USB jack right on the battery, so you don’t need to keep track of a random charging cradle that will inevitably get lost. I do NOT like that it’s an old-style USB-Mini jack instead of USB-C. I’m trying to purge my house of all Mini electronics, and was disappointed to have a new reason to keep my Mini cables around for the foreseeable future.Before mounting the pad, I set it up on my phone. I already had the MyQ app set up for my garage door opener, so I didn’t have to go through the process of setting up an account. Adding the keypad to my account turned out to be more of a headache than I expected. For some reason rather than just sending the WiFi credentials to the pad via Bluetooth (you pair with your phone during setup anyway) you have to enter in your password. I have a pretty long password, and apparently screwed up the first time, because it wouldn’t connect to WiFi no matter what I tried. I tried resetting WiFi via the reset button, and reentering the credentials, but that didn’t work either. I wound up having to factory-reset the pad and go from scratch on the setup. The factory reset process is in the instructions, but not where you’d expect it to be—it’s at the top of the section describing the LED colors and patterns. Once it was able to pair with WiFi I thought it had hung, and I almost tried resetting it again. It sat there slow-blinking a green light, which means it’s “connecting to the video cloud” according to the instructions, for close to five minutes before finally going to a solid green light and having it show up on my app.Over all, I’d give the whole setup experience like a 2/5 star review—it could have been more frustrating, but certainly not much more. What should have taken five minutes wound up taking most of an hour. While setting it up with the app I was in my office, about 4’ from my WiFi router, so it wasn’t a “weak signal” issue. I have Blink cameras around my house, in addition to other smart home appliances, and generally it’s easier to set up and pair than this was. For instance, with a Blink camera you just put the battery in, hit the “+” button in the app, you take a snapshot of the QR code printed on the device itself with the app, and it handles the rest. There’s no reason this couldn’t be just as easy, there’s even a QR code on the back that you never even use.At this point I mounted the keypad, which was the easiest part of the whole thing. There was only one spot I could reasonably mount it because of the design of my door and its frame, and it took all of five minutes. I held the mount up to where I wanted it with a small level next to it, and jabbed an awl into the wood through the screw holes in the mount. I drilled small pilot holes where I had jabbed with the awl, then put the mount back up and screwed it in with the included screws. I had gotten the adjustable mount as well as the fixed one, and wound up just using the fixed mount because it looked cleaner and I didn’t need the adjustability. The adjustable mount doesn’t look any harder to mount.As for the functionality of the device itself, it works like a charm. One specific use case has been great: I hate going for a walk with jangling keys in my pocket. I have a Ford Expedition that has a keypad on its door, so my go-to method when taking the dog for a walk would be to leave through the garage, unlock the truck with its keypad, close the garage with the opener in there, and relock the door. Then when the walk was over, repeat the steps in reverse. Now, I can click one button on the garage door keypad to close the door, and type in my code to open it back up. Easy. As I said, I have Blink cameras all around my house, so the camera on the keypad was not a selling point to me. It’s a $3/month subscription to MyQ to make it “save” videos, and I have no intention to set that up. The live video through the app is very clear and smooth, even though I only have 3/4 bars of signal to the keypad where it’s situated. I don’t believe there’s a way to fully disable the camera to extend battery life, but I have sensitivity turned all the way down.Over all I like this thing, because it makes one specific part of my life slightly easier. But, if you have MyQ-compatible garage door opener, and you’ve been wanting to get some security cameras around your house, this is certainly a viable option. Though, this keypad is still top notch especially for the initial price as the install is a breeze, the app makes setup and use extremely easy, and the breadth of features cover everything you could ask for. For those reasons I would recommend this to nearly everyone and if you don`t have an issue paying the annual subscription fee then it is a must buy.