Help from Claude

After weeks of waiting for the garage door technician to properly install the Wi-Fi controller, I thought the hardest part was finally behind me. Instead, I spent nearly as long trying to connect the controller to Homebridge so I could operate the door through Apple Home. I initially turned to Copilot for help, but its suggestions sent me on a wild goose chase. I made countless changes to JSON configuration files, restarted Homebridge more times than I can remember, and still got nowhere. Eventually, I gave up on finding a straightforward solution and put together a couple of less-than-ideal workarounds just to get things working.

The frustrating part was knowing the setup should work, since I’d had the same arrangement in my old house. Today, I decided to try again, this time with help from Claude. Troubleshooting with Claude was much more methodical, and I worked through the possible causes step by step. Eventually, we found a network setting that had been causing the issue. Finally, I had some success: the garage door is now visible in Apple Home and working as intended. It took persistence, but sometimes sticking with a problem really does pay off.