Hi, I’ve been searching the forums and see lots of conversations about retrofitting garage doors. However, I’ll be starting from scratch and have the ability to pick any garage door opener and any other options that make this easier than some of the discussions I see on this topic. Any advice would be helpful
You’ll have to find a garage door opener that will work with a standard push button and not some fancy control button that controls the light and opens the door because from my experience those type wont allow a 2 second contact closure to operate the door, like some of the genie brand ones and maybe others. what I did was replace the outlet that the garage door opener plugges into with a ge zwave outlet, plugged the opener into the always on outlet then a 120v relay into the zwave controlled outlet, wired the pushbutton terminals across the normaly open sent of contacts on the relay. have a scene that turn the switch on and then off 2 seconds later to operate.
From what I’m gathering an opener like this might be trouble?
I’m still not sure exactly what I’m looking for / or to avoid.
If you do not mind a little soldering … very easy … I am sure you can find someone to do it …
Then check out the Garage Door Plugin … I use a GlobalCache Relay to drive 2 garage doors.
A single GlobalCache can handle upto 3 Garage Doors.
Than you can use what ever hardware you want … Just get an extra remote for Vera!
Thanks, I guess what I’m trying to figure out is which Garage Door opener(s) will make my life easiest (if any). Since I can pick the opener out from scratch I’m trying to figure out what characteristics make life easier or harder when I try to connect it to my z-wave network. Unfortunately I have no hands on experience so I’m trying to this stuff by reading forum posts which is in some cases making me more confused.
Even these fancy garage goor openers have a push button on the module that you press to open and close the door. Just solder two wires across that switch and use that to control the openng and closing of the door. That is what I did and it works like a charm with the Garage Door plugin. I dont like to use a remote because you have to periodically replace the battery. And that battery cannot be monitored by Vera.
I have had garage door openers that have lasted longer than me living in the house they were used for without changing a battery. You must go in and out a lot!
If you make a mistake soldering a garage door opener … that’s a couple hundred dollar mistake. If you do it to a remote … that’s a $15 mistake.
I recently configured a garage door by installing a second wire into the opener itself. This is a Craftsman 139.53939D with the “smart” remote panel that can control lighting, reports temperature, etc. Installation meant pushing the release button, inserting the second set of wires, and releasing the button
FWIW, I had previously tried to wire a Tap2Pass device the same way to the drive unit, and the remote panel then started reporting a wiring error, although the door functioned as normal. As the product did not work for me, I removed the wire from the T2P, but left it there disconnected. This was a bit of a fluke, as when I went to install my garage door controller (an Insteon IO Linc), I just took that same wire and connected it to this new controller. There are no wiring errors being reported in this configuration. You can easily check if this will work by connecting the second wire and tapping the exposed ends together.
The setup works and the sensor trips are reported fairly promptly within UI5. Can’t say that this will work with any other models, but it worked in this case.