Building A Home? Install A Garage Door Opener With A Camera

If you are building a house or replacing an opener that has run its course, the camera question comes up now, not later. Retrofitting one after the fact means a second product, a second mount and a second thing to keep charged. Building it into the opener itself is the cleaner answer.

The LiftMaster Secure View is an opener with a wide-angle camera built directly into the unit. It watches the garage, it talks to your phone, and it runs on the same myQ app that controls the door. Here is what it actually does, and whether it earns its place in a Phoenix garage.

What the Secure View Actually Includes

Three things are built into the opener, so there is nothing extra to mount on the ceiling.

• Wide-angle camera. Livestream 24/7 from anywhere, or record 1080p video with a subscription plan. It has motion detection and night vision, and the lens can be adjusted a full 360 degrees by hand so you can aim it where you actually want it.
• Two-way audio. A built-in microphone lets you talk to whoever is in the garage from the app, with adjustable volume. If your neighbor is standing over your toolbox looking for a wrench, you can talk him through it. The microphone can be disabled entirely if you would rather it not be there.
• Phone control. The myQ app gives you door status, sends alerts when the door opens or closes, and lets you open or close it from anywhere.

Why a Camera in the Garage Is Not Overkill

For most families the garage is not a side door. It is the door. LiftMaster puts the number at 47.5 million Americans who use the garage as their primary way in and out of the house. If that is how you enter your own home several times a day, it is the entry point most worth watching.

It is also the door other people use. Outside your own household, these are the most common visitors who get access:

• Friend or neighbor: 45%
• Pet sitter: 16%
• Repairman: 12%
• Housecleaner: 12%

Every one of those is a situation where you are either home to open the door or handing out a keypad code you will probably never change.

Letting People In Without Handing Out a Code

This is the part that changes day to day life more than the video does. A plumber is coming Tuesday and you are at work. Instead of leaving the door unlocked or giving out a code that outlives the visit, you open the door from your phone when he arrives, watch him go in, and close it behind him.

If you want the same control on the door between the garage and the house, Yale and LiftMaster smart locks pair with the system for key-free entry, so the interior door is not the weak link in an otherwise locked-down garage.

Package Delivery Straight Into the Garage

Key by Amazon In-Garage Delivery works through the same system. The driver scans the package at your door, the garage opens, the package goes inside, and the door closes behind them. With Secure View you can watch the whole thing happen in real time rather than trusting that it did.

What This Actually Means in a Phoenix Garage

Two things make this more useful here than it would be in a mild climate.

The first is heat. A package sitting on a Phoenix porch from noon to 6pm in July is sitting in 110 degree air, and anything with a battery, an adhesive, a chocolate coating or a medication label does not survive that well. Getting it inside the garage is not just about theft.

The second is that Valley homes lean hard on the garage as the main entrance. Front doors here are frequently decorative. If the garage is the door your family actually uses, it is also the door worth having eyes on.

One practical note specific to our climate: an attached garage in a Phoenix summer regularly runs past 120 degrees, and that heat is hard on electronics mounted to the ceiling. It is also hard on the opener itself, which is one reason we push annual maintenance harder than companies in cooler markets do.

Is It Worth It?

Honest answer: it depends on whether you will use it. If you already open your garage from your phone, get packages several times a week, and let service people in while you are at work, the camera earns its keep quickly. If your garage door is a door you open with a remote when you get home and never think about otherwise, a standard belt drive opener will serve you fine and cost less.

What we would not recommend is buying the camera opener to solve a problem the door itself is causing. If your current setup is loud, slow, or straining, that is usually the door being out of balance rather than the opener being outdated, and a new opener will not fix it. We would rather tell you that up front than sell you the wrong box.

Getting One Installed

We install the full LiftMaster line including Secure View, and we carry every other major brand if you want to compare before you commit. New build or straight swap, we handle opener installation start to finish, including hauling the old unit away and setting the force and travel limits so the safety reverse actually works.

If your existing opener is only a few years old, ask us about opener repair first. Plenty of the units we get called out to look at need a gear kit and a tune-up, not a replacement.

Serving Phoenix and the rest of Maricopa County. Request a quote and we will tell you what your garage actually needs.

Product specifications, the 47.5 million figure and the visitor access percentages in this article come from LiftMaster. Read the original LiftMaster article.